Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University(OHSU) have found that melatonin, a naturally occurring brain substance, can relieve the doldrums of winter depression, also known as seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. The study is publishing online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The study was led by Alfred Lewy, M.D., Ph.D., an internationally recognized pioneer in the study of circadian (24-hour) rhythm disturbances, such as those found in air travelers and shift workers, as well as in totally blind people. Lewy and his colleagues in the OHSU Sleep and Mood Disorders Lab set out to test the hypothesis that circadian physiological rhythms become misaligned with the sleep/wake cycle during the short days of winter, causing some people to become depressed. Usually these rhythms track to the later dawn in winter, resulting in a circadian phase delay with respect to sleep similar to what happens flying westward. Some people appear to be tracking to the earlier dusk of winter, causing a similar amount of misalignment but in the phase-advance direction. Symptom severity in SAD patients correlated with the misalignment in either direction. The treatment of choice for most SAD patients is bright light exposure, which causes phase advances when scheduled in the morning. Because patients know when they are exposed to bright light, however, there is a considerable placebo response associated with it. Melatonin can also cause phase advances, but it has to be taken in the afternoon. The Lewy team used afternoon melatonin to test if it was more antidepressant than melatonin taken in the morning, which causes phase delays.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 8858 - Posted: 05.02.2006

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Coffee made out green, unroasted coffee beans promotes weight loss, according to a new study on compounds that are naturally present in the beans. The discovery mirrors earlier research on green tea, which was found to slightly increase metabolism and to speed up the body's ability to burn fat. Green coffee appears to have a more potent effect. "If a human consumes one kilogram per day of food (2.2 pounds) containing 10 grams (.35 ounce) of green coffee bean extract for 14 days, the increase in body weight may be suppressed by 35 percent," said lead author Hiroshi Shimoda. Shimoda, who is a scientist at the Oryza Oil & Fat Chemical Company, Limited, in Aichi, Japan, told Discovery News that consuming regular, roasted coffee will not lead to much, if any, direct weight loss. He and his colleagues determined that there are two key types of compounds in unroasted coffee beans. The first is caffeine. The second is chlorogenic acid and its related compounds. Heating destroys the acids. "Chlorogenic acid is stable and normal at room temperature, but it is unstable at high temperatures," Shimoda explained. "Normally, coffee beans are roasted at a temperature of around 240 to 250° Celsius (464-482 degrees Fahrenheit). Roasting leads to decomposition of chlorogenic acid and forms brown aromatic Maillard reactants." Copyright © 2006 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 8857 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Ronald Kotulak Scientists are still a long way from figuring out what women and men really want, but they are getting a lot closer to understanding what makes their brains so different. That women and men think differently has little to do with whether they are handed dolls or trucks to play with as infants. After all, when infant monkeys are given a choice of human toys, females prefer dolls and males go after cars and trucks. The differences, researchers are beginning to discover, appear to have a lot more to do with how powerful hormones wire the female and male brain during early development and later in life. Among the newest findings: A previously unknown hormone appears to launch puberty's sexual and mental transformation; growth hormone is made in the brain's memory center at rates up to twice as high in females as in males; and the brain's hot button for emotions, the amygdala, is wired to different parts of the brain in women and men. Scientists hope the findings may help explain such mysteries as why females are often more verbal, more socially empathetic, more nurturing and more susceptible to depression, while males tend to be more aggressive, more outdoorsy, more focused on things than people and more vulnerable to alcohol and drug addiction. Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 8856 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A vaccine has been developed which may be able to fight the most aggressive form of brain tumour, scientists say. US researchers say their vaccine increased survival times for the 23 glioblastoma multiforme patients they tested it on by at least 18 months. Only four patients went on to die from the cancer, the study to be presented at a meeting of experts in the US said. A larger trial of the jab, which works by targeting a protein thought to drive the tumour's spread, is now planned. It uses an artificial form of the protein, which is found on the outside of 30-50% of tumours, to alert the immune system to its presence and attack it. The brain is tricked into thinking the protein, known as EGFRvIII, is foreign, and fighter cells in the immune system are sent in. Amy Heimberger, assistant professor of neurosurgery at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, said the vaccine was an easy-to-use "off-the-shelf" treatment that could potentially help half of all patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). She said results from the trial showed the vaccine significantly delays the progression of tumours until the cancer finds a new way to grow. But when tumours did grow again they did not display the EGFRvIII protein which led researchers to conclude that the vaccine had worked. Professor Heimberger said: "This is a proof of concept, and optimal use of the vaccine may be with chemotherapy to further retard progression. "Still, this is exciting because people have been trying to use immunotherapy against gliomas for a long time." (C)BBC

Keyword: Glia
Link ID: 8855 - Posted: 05.01.2006

By BENEDICT CAREY In recent years, psychiatric researchers have been experimenting with a bold and controversial treatment strategy: they are prescribing drugs to young people at risk for schizophrenia who have not yet developed the full-blown disorder. The hope is that while exposing some to drugs unnecessarily, preemptive treatment may help others ward off or even prevent psychosis, sparing them the agonizing flights of paranoia and confusion that torment the three million American who suffer schizophrenia. Yet the findings from the first long-term trial of early drug treatment, appearing today in The American Journal of Psychiatry, suggest that this preventive approach is more difficult to put into effect — and more treacherous — than scientists had hoped. Daily doses of the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa, from Eli Lilly, blunted symptoms in many patients and lowered their risk of experiencing a psychotic episode in the first year of treatment, the study found. But the drug also caused significant weight gain, and so many participants dropped out of the study that investigators could not draw firm conclusions about drug benefits, if any. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 8854 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Mike Rudin A new six-part BBC series, starting this week, looks at the newest research from around the world to find out what could it be that makes us happy. We all want to be happy but the problem has always been that you can't measure happiness. Happiness has always been seen as too vague a concept, as Lord Layard, Professor of Economics at the LSE and author of "Happiness - lessons from a new science" points out. There is a problem with the word happiness. When you use the word happy, it often has the sort of context of balloons floating up into the sky or something frivolous." Now scientists say they can actually measure happiness. Neuroscientists are measuring pleasure. They suggest that happiness is more than a vague concept or mood; it is real. Social scientists measure happiness simply by asking people how happy they are. It is argued that what a person says about their own happiness tends to tally with what friends or even strangers might say about them if asked the same question. Most people say they are fairly happy. The leading American psychologist Professor Ed Diener from the University of Illinois, told The Happiness Formula that the science of happiness is based on one straightforward idea: "It may sound silly but we ask people 'How happy are you 1-7, 1-10? And the interesting thing is that produces real answers that are valid, they're not perfect but they're valid and they predict all sorts of real things in their lives." (C)BBC

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 8853 - Posted: 05.01.2006

New Haven, Conn.--For young people who clearly seem to be developing early signs of schizophrenia, treatment with the antipsychotic drug olanzapine appears to lower or delay the rate of conversion to full-blown psychosis, according to an article by a Yale School of Medicine researcher in the May issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry. The findings are preliminary since 60 patients began the study and 17 completed it. Despite the long recruitment period and multiple study sites, participation was limited by the low incidence of pre-psychotic, or "prodromal," symptoms in the general population. Schizophrenia affects about one percent of the population, or three million people, and is one of the most disabling medical disorders. "Delay of the onset of the most severe symptoms of schizophrenia appears to have occurred because of the early recognition and treatment of these persons," said Robert Freedman, M.D., editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Psychiatry. "This enabled them to be better connected with treatment and to cope better with this devastating illness." The study, "The Prevention Through Risk Identification, Management, and Education (PRIME)," was conducted in two U.S. cities and two Canadian cities during 1998-2003. Senior author of the study was Thomas McGlashan, M.D., professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 8852 - Posted: 05.01.2006

Researchers from the Divisions of Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School have found in a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical study, that melatonin, taken orally during non-typical sleep times, significantly improves an individual’s ability to sleep. This finding is particularly important for rotating or night-shift workers, travelers with jet lag and individuals with advanced or delayed sleep phase syndrome. The findings appear in the May 1, 2006 issue of the journal Sleep. Melatonin is a hormone produced by the body at night in darkness, which helps the brain determine day and night to help regulate sleep cycles and circadian timing. Retinal light exposure inhibits the release of the hormone. Millions of Americans take melatonin supplements to improve their sleep, yet the results of prior studies on the efficacy of melatonin as a sleep-promoting agent have been mixed, according to the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality, which carried out an extensive review of this topic two years ago. The present study, conducted at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, sought to address this question. Thirty-six participants (21 men and 15 women), between the ages of 18 and 30 with no significant past or current medical disorders, sleep disorders, or psychological disorders were chosen for the study from a pool of applicants. © Rush University Medical Center,

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 8851 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JENNIFER MEDINA ALBANY, — A California neuroscientist and biologist whose research of fruit flies found genetic links to human behavior was awarded the $500,000 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, the country's largest award in the field. The winner, Dr. Seymour Benzer, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, began his pioneering research in neurological sciences in the 1960's, laying a foundation for generations of researchers who came after him, the judges said in their announcement on Friday. Dr. Benzer, now 84, is known for challenging the widespread belief that human behavior was shaped largely by outside forces. "Behavior can be dissected by manipulation," Dr. Benzer said at news conference at an Albany hotel. "Take your choice, you can start with genetic structure and make enormous differences in the environment." He said he became intrigued with the topic when his second daughter was born and he noticed remarkable differences from his first daughter. "I wondered, 'Are my wife and I doing things that differently?' " Dr. Benzer said. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 8850 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Staying focused in a world full of ticking clocks, clicking keyboards, and beeping smoke detectors is not as easy as you might think. Our brains have to decide what information is important enough to be introduced into our conscious minds and filter out all the rest. In other words, it has to know to tune out the sound of that crinkling paper and keep streaming in the words you're trying to read. If you've ever tried reading with a dripping faucet in the background, you probably know that sometimes this process doesn't always work perfectly. "All of us can be annoyed by something like that at times, but most of us are able to block such things out," says Monica Fabiani, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Illinois. But Fabiani has shown that how successful we are at ignoring background information might actually be connected to how old we are. In a recent study, she showed that people over seventy years of age have a tougher time tuning out such distractions. Fabiani and her team at the Beckman Institute used a new brain imaging technique known as EROS. Fabiani and her husband Gabriele Gratton are pioneering the use of EROS, which has some distinct advantages over other imaging methods. © ScienCentral, 2000-2006.

Keyword: Attention; Alzheimers
Link ID: 8849 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It kind of looks like a motorcycle helmet from the future; divided into sections with colored stripes, drilled full of holes, and stuck full of fiber optic cables. But don't be fooled -- it's actually a new brain imaging technique. Cognitive neuroscientists at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, Gabriele Gratton and Monica Fabiani call it EROS and explain that it works by using harmless beams of light. EROS stands for event related optical signal. It's optical because it uses light reflections and it's event-related because the signals it produces mirror events in the brain. So how can light give you an accurate picture of what's happening in the brain? "Even though we are not transparent, light does penetrate into tissue," Fabiani explains. So just like pressing a red laser pointer against your finger makes it glow red, shining light on your scalp also makes your brain give off faint reflections. As reported in "Scientific American Mind" magazine, EROS catches these reflections to create a picture of the activity in brain cells, or neurons. Gratton and Fabiani explain that each fiber optic cable going into the helmet is either a light source or a detector. The helmet holds them in place directly on the scalp so that they touch the skin in between hairs. When the light sources are turned on, the light diffuses through the head and ultimately reflects back, getting picked up by the detectors on the way out. © ScienCentral, 2000-2006.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 8848 - Posted: 06.24.2010

GLEN OAKS, NY -- Psychiatric researchers at The Zucker Hillside Hospital campus of The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research have uncovered evidence of a gene that appears to influence intelligence. Working in conjunction with researchers at Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics in Boston, the Zucker Hillside team examined the genetic blueprints of individuals with schizophrenia, a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by cognitive impairment, and compared them with healthy volunteers. They discovered that the dysbindin-1 gene (DTNBP1), which they previously demonstrated to be associated with schizophrenia, may also be linked to general cognitive ability. The study is published in the May 15 print issue of Human Molecular Genetics, available online today, April 27. "A robust body of evidence suggests that cognitive abilities, particularly intelligence, are significantly influenced by genetic factors. Existing data already suggests that dysbindin may influence cognition," said Katherine Burdick, PhD, the study's primary author. "We looked at several DNA sequence variations within the dysbindin gene and found one of them to be significantly associated with lower general cognitive ability in carriers of the risk variant compared with non-carriers in two independent groups." The study involved 213 unrelated Caucasian patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and 126 unrelated healthy Caucasian volunteers. The researchers measured cognitive performance in all subjects. They then analyzed participants' DNA samples. The researchers specifically examined six DNA sequence variations, also known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), in the dysbindin gene and found that one specific pattern of SNPs, known as a haplotype, was associated with general cognitive ability: Cognition was significantly impaired in carriers of the risk variant in both the schizophrenia group and the healthy volunteers as compared with the non-carriers.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Intelligence
Link ID: 8847 - Posted: 04.29.2006

Matsumoto, Japan -- Researchers have demonstrated spread of senile amyloidosis from affected mice to their nursing offspring. The paper by Korenaga et al., "Transmission of amyloidosis in offspring of mice with AApoAII amyloidosis," appears in the March issue of The American Journal of Pathology and is highlighted on the cover of the Journal. Dementia can result from several disease mechanisms, including amyloidosis. Amyloidosis occurs when cellular proteins that normally float freely in the body form organized, nonfunctional aggregates, or fibrils, that cause cellular damage. This injury can lead to such disorders as Alzheimer's disease and Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, depending on the protein involved and where the fibrils accumulate. Genetics are known to be involved in these disorders, but researchers have also shown that injecting fibrils into susceptible mice accelerates disease onset. That led researchers guided by Dr. Xiaoying Fu to ask whether pups born to affected mothers also display accelerated disease. Using a mouse strain that carries a mutation for senile amyloidosis, Dr. Fu's group injected female mice with amyloid fibrils, to accelerate their disease, and then allowed the mice to mate and produce offspring. The mouse pups born to these mothers exhibited elevated levels of amyloid fibrils that increased with age. These fibrils were first seen in the intestines, spreading later to liver, spleen and other organs.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 8846 - Posted: 04.29.2006

Helen Pearson A messy birth could be good for the baby's digestion. So say researchers in Germany, who have found evidence that baby mice squeezing through the birth canal swallow bacterial molecules that help their gut grow healthily. The finding suggests that kids born by caesarean might miss out. Swarms of friendly bacteria normally live in our guts, and cells lining the intestinal tubes do not attack them. Mathias Hornef at the University Clinic of Freiburg, Germany, and his colleagues, have found that, in mice at least, these intestinal cells 'learn' not to harm the bugs sometime around birth. The team extracted intestinal cells from mice embryos before birth and exposed them to a component of bacteria. The embryonic cells reacted and produced inflammatory molecules. But the same gut cells from one-day-old newborn mice or adult mice did not. Somehow, the cells in the more developed mice had learned to ignore the bacterial trigger. The researchers think that bacterial scraps naturally slopping around in the birth canal and mother's faeces are swallowed by the baby mice as they make their entry into the world. These molecules pass down into the gut, where they stimulate the gut cells; a single exposure is enough to teach the cells to tolerate friendly bugs in the future. ©2006 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 8845 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Blood clots in the brain may be a sign of increased risk of developing dementia, scientists suggest. The clots, known as cerebral emboli, were seen in people who had Alzheimer's disease or another form of dementia. The University of Manchester team who carried out the study say they could act as an early warning sign of the conditons. Dementia experts said the British Medical Journal finding was a significant and valuable discovery. The researchers monitored the occurrence of spontaneous blood clots in the brain in 170 patients - 85 with Alzheimer's disease and 85 with vascular dementia - compared them with groups of people of the same age. Forty per cent (32) patients with Alzheimer's and 37% (31) with vascular dementia had clots in just one hour of monitoring, compared to just 14 and 15% in the healthy groups (12 patients in each). The researchers, led by Professor Charles McCollum, said the finding suggested that the types of dementia have more in common than had been previously thought. They said more research was needed to investigate their finding further. Clive Ballard, director of research at the Alzheimer's Society which partially funded the study, said: "Blood clots in the brain can be detected in people at any age and their prevalence in people with Alzheimer's disease is a very significant finding. "The strong correlation between Alzheimer's and blood clots could lead to a way of detecting and treating Alzheimer's disease much earlier." (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 8844 - Posted: 04.28.2006

From The Economist print edition IF CANNABIS were unknown, and bioprospectors were suddenly to find it in some remote mountain crevice, its discovery would no doubt be hailed as a medical breakthrough. Scientists would praise its potential for treating everything from pain to cancer, and marvel at its rich pharmacopoeia—many of whose chemicals mimic vital molecules in the human body. In reality, cannabis has been with humanity for thousands of years and is considered by many governments (notably America's) to be a dangerous drug without utility. Any suggestion that the plant might be medically useful is politically controversial, whatever the science says. It is in this context that, on April 20th, America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement saying that smoked marijuana has no accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. The statement is curious in a number of ways. For one thing, it overlooks a report made in 1999 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), part of the National Academy of Sciences, which came to a different conclusion. John Benson, a professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska who co-chaired the committee that drew up the report, found some sound scientific information that supports the medical use of marijuana for certain patients for short periods—even for smoked marijuana. This is important, because one of the objections to marijuana is that, when burned, its smoke contains many of the harmful things found in tobacco smoke, such as carcinogenic tar, cyanide and carbon monoxide. Yet the IOM report supports what some patients suffering from multiple sclerosis, AIDS and cancer—and their doctors—have known for a long time. This is that the drug gives them medicinal benefits over and above the medications they are already receiving, and despite the fact that the smoke has risks. © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2006.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 8843 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--MIT brain researchers have developed a "cocktail" of dietary supplements, now in human clinical trials, that holds promise for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. For years, doctors have encouraged people to consume foods such as fish that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids because they appear to improve memory and other brain functions. The MIT research suggests that a cocktail treatment of omega-3 fatty acids and two other compounds normally present in the blood, could delay the cognitive decline seen in Alzheimer's disease, which afflicts an estimated 4 million to 5 million Americans. "It's been enormously frustrating to have so little to offer people that have (Alzheimer's) disease," said Richard Wurtman, the Cecil H. Green Distinguished Professor of Neuropharmacology at MIT, who led the research team. The study appears in the May 9 issue of Brain Research. Wurtman will present the research at the International Academy of Nutrition and Aging 2006 Symposium on Nutrition and Alzheimer's Disease/Cognitive Decline in Chicago on Tuesday, May 2. The three compounds in the treatment cocktail - omega-3 fatty acids, uridine and choline - are all needed by brain neurons to make phospholipids, the primary component of cell membranes.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 8842 - Posted: 04.28.2006

Rowan Hooper An artificial insect "eye" could give surveillance cameras and surgical instruments the ability to see almost everything around them. The ultra-wide angle compound lens, which is about the size of an insect's eye, was developed by US researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. The 'back end' of the camera is yet to be produced. The eyes of insects such as bees and dragonflies are made up of tens of thousands of tiny components called ommatidia. These all point in different directions to give the insect a very wide field of vision. Inspired by this, Luke Lee and colleagues developed an artificial compound eye consisting of a moulded polymer resin dome filled with thousands of light-guiding channels, called waveguides, each topped with its own miniature lens. The artificial eye could be used to create surveillance cameras, cellphone cameras, and surgical endoscopes with a much wider field of vision, the researchers say. The whole eye is 2.5 millimetres in diameter. Each artificial ommatidia consists of a lens attached to a polymer waveguide that directs light towards the centre of the eye. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 8841 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Topping up levels of a hormone found naturally in the stomach could be a new way to treat obesity. Boosting oxyntomodulin limits appetite and raises activity levels at the same time - leading to speedy but healthy weight loss rates, a UK study suggests. The hormone tells us we are full after a meal, but the obese have less of it. The fact dieting tends to lead to reductions in activity often makes weight loss harder, the International Journal of Obesity study says. Professor Steve Bloom head of the Division of Investigative Science at Imperial College London said earlier studies had shown oxyntomodulin decreased appetite. But this was the first time it had been shown to increase physical activity levels. The fact that oxyntomodulin was naturally found in the body was also an advantage as it was unlikely to have unpleasant side-effects, he said. "It's not like one of those nasty drugs where you have to take some horrible chemical for years. It is naturally a occurring hormone. We are using the body's own method of limiting appetite." There are some conditions where people have high levels of the hormone after certain types of injuries to the gut, for example, and they tend to loose a lot of weight and stay very thin. And there do not appear to be any harmful effects of having high levels of oxyntomodulin, he said pointing to some medical conditions that produce this. The only side-effect appears to be sustained weight loss, he said (C)BBC

Keyword: Obesity; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 8840 - Posted: 04.27.2006

Among spotted hyenas, being a supermom is less about packing lunches, and more about packing a hormonal punch that gives her cubs a powerful head start. In a study appearing in the April 26 edition of the international science journal Nature, Michigan State University zoology professor Kay Holekamp and her former graduate student Stephanie Dloniak along with Jeffrey French from the University of Nebraska, report that high-ranking, dominant spotted hyena mothers pass to their offspring high levels of certain hormones that make cubs more aggressive and sexually vigorous – in other words more likely to survive, thrive and reproduce. The study shows that alpha females have higher levels of androgen during the final stages of pregnancy than lower-ranking group members. “What this means is that there are gifts a mom can give to her baby,” said Holekamp, who also is a recent recipient of a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship for her work on hyenas. “She can manipulate her offspring’s behavior and help her kids to survive and reproduce successfully by transferring status-related traits via prenatal hormone exposure.” “This research sheds light on mammalian reproductive biology and helps us imagine how evolution might have produced such a bizarre product,” Holekamp said © 2006 Michigan State University Division of University Relations

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 8839 - Posted: 06.24.2010