Children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) suffer from a variety of behavioral alterations. For example, they may exhibit alterations in sleeping and eating patterns, which may indicate that their circadian systems – which control biological rhythms – have been affected by alcohol exposure during development. A rodent study in the May issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research confirms that alcohol exposure during a period equivalent to the third human trimester influences the ability to synchronize circadian rhythms to light cues. "Human infants with FASD may suffer from sleep disorders, including a reduced amount of sleep, abnormal brain wave activity, and fragmented rapid eye movement and slow-wave sleep, which may be related, in part, to circadian dysregulation," explained Jennifer D. Thomas, associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University and corresponding author for the study. "Disruptions in circadian rhythms can also influence other behaviors, including attention and mood regulation. In fact, individuals with FASD may suffer from depression and other psychopathologies." Although sleeping, eating and mood can be influenced by many factors, she said, the circadian systems are responsible for coordinating multiple physiological systems with environmental cues. "Most of our body processes are regulated in the circadian fashion," concurred David Earnest, a professor in the department of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics at Texas A&M University Health Sciences Center. "We know that these circadian rhythms are important in human health, although we still need to fully determine how alterations in circadian rhythmicity are linked to human mental and physical disorders."

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 8818 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Celeste Biever Retinal implant AN IMPLANT that squirts chemicals into the back of your eye may not sound like much fun. But a solar-powered chip that stimulates retinal cells by spraying them with neurotransmitters could restore sight to blind people. Unlike other implants under development that apply an electric charge directly to retinal cells, the device does not cause the cells to heat up. It also uses very little power, so it does not need external batteries. The retina, which lines the back and sides of the eyeball, contains photoreceptor cells that release signalling chemicals called neurotransmitters in response to light. The neurotransmitters pass into nerve cells on top of the photoreceptors, from where the signals are relayed to the brain via a series of electrical and chemical reactions. In people with retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, the photoreceptors become damaged, ultimately causing blindness. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 8817 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By KATE ZERNIKE A Food and Drug Administration statement on Thursday denying any medical benefits of marijuana reinforced the divide between federal officials and the states that have approved the drug's use to ease some medical conditions. "It's consistent with the long-held federal view on this medicine, and that is that marijuana is the equivalent of heroin and cocaine," said Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for California's attorney general, Bill Lockyer. "California voters disagree." State officials said the announcement would not affect their laws. But they and federal officials said it clarified the federal government's intention to continue enforcing its laws against marijuana, even in states that allow it for medical purposes. "It's a very good statement so that people can clearly see what the policy of the United States government is," said Rogene Waite, a spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration. While it has always been the drug enforcement agency's policy to enforce laws against marijuana, Ms. Waite said, "now it's clearly out there, so that people don't have to look everywhere to figure this out." Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 8816 - Posted: 04.22.2006

Bruce Bower It lurks in the mind's dark basement, secretly shaping our opinions, attitudes, and stereotypes. This devious manipulator does its best to twist our behavior to its nefarious end. Its stock in trade: stirring up racial prejudice and a host of other pernicious preconceptions about members of various groups. Upstairs, our conscious mind ignores this pushy cellar dweller and assumes that we're decent folk whose actions usually reflect good intentions. Welcome to the disturbing world of implicit bias, where people's preferences for racial, ethnic, and other groups lie outside their awareness and often clash with their professed beliefs about those groups. In the past 15 years, most social psychologists have come to agree that implicit biases, also known as unconscious attitudes, play an often-unnoticed role in our lives. Researchers study implicit biases using any of several techniques, such as tracking participants' feelings and behaviors after subliminally showing them pictures of black or old people. However, one measure—the Implicit Association Test, or IAT—has proved especially popular. Since its introduction in 1998, more than 250 IAT-related studies have been published. More than 3 million IATs have been completed on a Web site (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/) established by the test's major proponents—Anthony G. Greenwald of the University of Washington in Seattle, Mahzarin R. Banaji of Harvard University, and Brian A. Nosek of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Other online venues run by organizations concerned about various types of discrimination also offer the IAT to visitors. Copyright ©2006 Science Service.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 8815 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Peter Weiss A new type of eyeglasses with electrically adjustable focus might someday render bifocals and reading glasses obsolete, the device's inventors say. So far, the researchers have made a battery-powered prototype with close-up focus that flicks on and off with a switch. Future versions of the eyeglasses may incorporate a distance sensor to automatically adjust the focus as the viewer's gaze changes between far and near viewing, says one of the inventors, electrical engineer David L. Mathine of the University of Arizona in Tucson. Most people by their late 40s can no longer focus on close objects. This visual defect is known as presbyopia. The company PixelOptics of Roanoke, Va., plans to create a commercial version of the electrically adjusted eyeglasses to market to presbyopic people, who typically wear bifocals, trifocals, or graded lenses. Worldwide, about 50 million people per year become presbyopic, according to the company's Web site. In bifocals, some portion of the lens remains unfocused for the distance of interest at any given time, notes Mathine. In the new eyeglasses, the entire lens switches to the desired focus. For close vision, for instance, "you don't have just the bottom half of your eyeglasses. You get the whole view," he says. Copyright ©2006 Science Service

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 8814 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Michael Hopkin Fears of a link between aluminium and Alzheimer's disease have been reignited by the case of a British woman who died of the illness 16 years after an industrial accident polluted her local drinking water. An autopsy on Carole Cross's brain showed that she was suffering from a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's when she died in May 2004, and also revealed the presence of high levels of aluminium in her tissues. The researchers who investigated her brain cannot say whether the aluminium was the cause, but point out that the woman had no family history of dementia. The polluting incident occurred in 1988 when a truck driver mistakenly emptied some 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate — used in the early stages of wastewater treatment — into a tank containing drinking water destined for the village of Camelford in Cornwall, UK. An estimated 20,000 people may have been exposed to high levels of the chemical for several weeks. Concerned residents are waiting to see whether more people will be similarly affected. Anecdotal reports state that several other villagers are suffering from dementia. ©2006 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Alzheimers; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 8813 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer An intense battery of medical and psychological tests of people with chronic fatigue syndrome has strengthened the idea that the mysterious ailment is actually a collection of five or more conditions with varying genetic and environmental causes, scientists reported yesterday. But though the syndrome comes in many flavors, these experts said, the new work also points to an important common feature: The brains and immune systems of affected people do not respond normally to physical and psychological stresses. The researchers predicted that continued clarification of the precise genes and hormones involved will lead to better diagnostic tests and therapies for the ailment, which may affect close to 1 million Americans. "This is a very important step forward in the field of chronic fatigue syndrome research," said Julie L. Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which sponsored the project. The new findings come from the largest clinical trial ever to focus on people with the syndrome, a debilitating condition accompanied by unexplained extreme fatigue, memory and concentration problems, sleep disorders and chronic pain. © 2006 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Stress; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 8812 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GARDINER HARRIS WASHINGTON, — The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that "no sound scientific studies" supported the medical use of marijuana, contradicting a 1999 review by a panel of highly regarded scientists. Susan Bro, an agency spokeswoman, said Thursday's statement resulted from a past combined review by federal drug enforcement, regulatory and research agencies that concluded "smoked marijuana has no currently accepted or proven medical use in the United States and is not an approved medical treatment." Ms. Bro said the agency issued the statement in response to numerous inquiries from Capitol Hill but would probably do nothing to enforce it. "Any enforcement based on this finding would need to be by D.E.A. since this falls outside of F.D.A.'s regulatory authority," she said. Eleven states have legalized medicinal use of marijuana, but the Drug Enforcement Administration and the director of national drug control policy, John P. Walters, have opposed those laws. A Supreme Court decision last year allowed the federal government to arrest anyone using marijuana, even for medical purposes and even in states that have legalized its use. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 8811 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Whether it's from surgery, an accident or stroke, when the brain is injured, the damage is usually permanent. Most of the time, the cells of the brain don't grow back. But two researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working to change that. "The problem we're trying to solve with the research is how to reconnect disconnected parts of the brain," says one of the researchers, neuroscientist Rutledge Ellis-Behnke. He and professor Gerald Schneider of the M.I.T. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences are using nanotechnology to create tiny bridges that can help brain cells grow back together. The bridges assemble themselves from protein fragments called peptides, which are injected into the injured area. The bridges are similar to the normal structures among brain cells. "It would be easy to fool an anatomist into thinking that this was part of the brain," says Schneider about these bridges that are smaller than the width of a human hair. He adds that "it's functioning like it's part of the natural material that fills spaces between the nerve cells in the brain." The peptide nano-bridges are not permanent. After a while they dissolve. © ScienCentral, 2000-2006.

Keyword: Regeneration; Stroke
Link ID: 8809 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Susan S. Lang A honeybee swarm bivouacs on a tree branch, waiting for scout bees to select candidate sites for a new home, deliberate among the choices and then reach a verdict -- a process "complicated enough to rival the dealings of any department committee," says Cornell biologist Thomas Seeley. When 10,000 honeybees fly the coop to hunt for a new home, usually a tree cavity, they have a unique method of deciding which site is right: With great efficiency they narrow down the options and minimize bad decisions. Their technique, says Cornell University biologist Thomas Seeley, includes coalition building until a quorum develops. The Seeley group's study, which is published in the May-June issue of American Scientist, might well be used to help improve human group decision-making, he says. Scientists had known that honeybee scouts "waggle dance" to report on food. Seeley and his colleagues, however, have confirmed that they dance to report on real estate, too, as part of their group decision-making process. The better the housing site, the stronger the waggle dance, the researchers found, and that prompts other scouts to visit a recommended site. If they agree it's a good choice, they also dance to advertise the site and revisit it frequently.

Keyword: Animal Communication
Link ID: 8808 - Posted: 04.21.2006

By Katherine Unger Written words have only been around for about 6000 years, but that hasn't kept some scientists from believing that there's a specific part of our brain devoted to reading. Now this controversial idea is getting an important piece of support from a man whose surgical procedure may have disrupted this region. The existence of a brain region dedicated to reading was first proposed by neurologist Jules Déjerine in the late 19th century. Brain scans appear to support the hypothesis: The region--called the visual word form area (VWFA) and located in the rear of the brain's left hemisphere--lights up when individuals read words. But skeptics note that the same thing happens when subjects gaze upon faces or objects, indicating that the area isn't specialized to process only written language. A chance opportunity allowed neuroscientists led by Laurent Cohen of INSERM, the Université Paris and the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière in France to put the theory to the test. The team became aware of a man who was about to have brain surgery to treat epilepsy. The surgery was to remove a small area next to the VWFA, so Cohen's team carried out a set of experiments. Prior to the surgery, the man took 600 milliseconds to read common words of three to nine letters. The word's length didn't affect the speed of his response. Functional MRIs and electrodes implanted in the man's brain showed activation specifically in the VWFA when he read words; distinctly different areas lit up when he named objects such as tools. © 2006 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 8807 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tracy Staedter, Discovery News — A rat nerve cell attached to a semiconductor chip has exchanged a signal with the chip, an achievement that could lead to organic computers that process information like a brain, say researchers. In the long term, the technology also could lead to prosthetic limbs that are controlled by a person's brain and nerves. "If you know how single neurons couple to a chip, you can learn how whole tissue couples to a chip," said Peter Fromherz, professor of biophysics at Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Germany and coordinator of the so-called NaChip project, which also involves researchers from the University of Padua, Italy, and the University of Zurich, Switzerland. To make the nerve cell and the chip compatible, the researchers worked with German microchip company Infineon to modify the chip's surface. The resulting one-millimeter chip has more than 16,000 transistors that match up with ion-carrying channels in the nerve cell. The chips were specially coated so that they could be immersed in a solution meant to keep the nerve cell alive. © 2006 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 8806 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NEUROFEEDBACK practice may be able to alleviate some of the symptoms of autism, according to a pilot study on eight children with the disorder. The technique involves hooking people up to electrodes and getting them to try and control their brain waves. In people with autism, the "mu" wave is thought to be dysfunctional. Since this wave is associated with "mirror neurons" - the brain cells that underpin empathy and understanding of others - Jaime Pineda at the University of California, San Diego, wondered if controlling it through neurofeedback could exercise faulty mirror neurons and improve their function. He attached sensors to the necks and heads of eight children with autism and had them watch a video game of a racing car going round a track. For all of the children, sitting still and concentrating kept the car travelling around the track, but five of them were also able to harness their mu waves and use them to adjust the car's speed. After 30 sessions over 10 weeks, Pineda found that the five children's mu brainwaves had changed and they performed better on tasks involving imitation, typically difficult for people with autism. Pineda presented his work at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in San Francisco last week. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Autism; Vision
Link ID: 8805 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Gaia Vince Everybody has experienced a sense of “losing oneself” in an activity – being totally absorbed in a task, a movie or sex. Now researchers have caught the brain in the act. Self-awareness, regarded as a key element of being human, is switched off when the brain needs to concentrate hard on a tricky task, found the neurobiologists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. The team conducted a series of experiments to pinpoint the brain activity associated with introspection and that linked to sensory function. They found that the brain assumes a robotic functionality when it has to concentrate all its efforts on a difficult, timed task – only becoming "human" again when it has the luxury of time. Ilan Goldberg and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of nine volunteers during the study. Participants were shown picture cards and told to push buttons to indicate whether or not an animal was depicted. The series was shown slowly the first time, and at three times the rate on the second run through. On its third showing, the volunteers were asked to use the buttons to indicate their emotional response to the pictures. The experiment was then repeated using musical extracts, rather than pictures, and asked to identify whether a trumpet played. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 8804 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Evidence is mounting that estrogen, a hormone critical to a woman's sexual development, should also be thought of as a neurotransmitter when acting in the brain, a Johns Hopkins University behavioral neuroscientist said. Gregory Ball, professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in the university's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, has added to that evidence with an article, written with a Belgian collaborator, to be published in the May issue of Trends in Neuroscience. Their research, studying estradiol (a form of estrogen) in the brains of quail, suggested that estrogen in its role as a neurotransmitter, or brain signaling chemical, helps to regulate male sexual activity and the levels at which pain is perceived. "How we categorize estradiol is of more than semantic interest," Ball said of adding the "neurotransmitter" label to the estrogen's traditional label of "hormone." "It influences how scientists conduct research, the kind of experiments we do, and even the way we design clinical interventions that involve actions of estrogen in the brain." In the article, the team argues that brain estrogens display many, if not all, of the functional characteristics of neurotransmitters. They are released at synapses (the tiny spaces between neurons) and act rapidly (often within minutes) to affect the activity of neighboring cells.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 8803 - Posted: 04.21.2006

By ALAN RIDING LONDON, — More than most art forms, opera demands a suspension of disbelief. For a long time this included accepting that a man could sing with the voice of a woman. It was not a natural gift, but the results often drove audiences wild: castrati, as they were known, were among the rulers of the 18th-century opera stage. True, most of the Italian boys who were castrated to preserve their unbroken voices never achieved fame . Yet enough did to encourage some impoverished parents to allow one or two of their sons to undergo this pre-pubescent mutilation. In the 1730's, it has been estimated, as many as 4,000 boys were so altered each year. Intense musical training followed, so that, by their midteens, the youths were ready to sing in church choirs. Then, with opera all the rage from Naples to Venice, the best voices were selected by theater managers for the stage. A few became stars across Europe. Those seeking the highest fees headed for London, where Handel was presiding over a boom in Italian opera. "Handel and the Castrati," a revealing small show at the Handel House Museum here through Oct. 1, tells their stories. On display are a few objects, including an 18th-century iron "castratori" instrument, as well as paintings, engravings, music scores and recorded excerpts from Handel operas and oratorios, with castrato roles now sung by counter-tenors and mezzo-sopranos. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Hearing
Link ID: 8802 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Researchers at the University at Buffalo affiliated with the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences have identified a novel agent that can protect neurons involved in Parkinson's disease from being destroyed by the pesticide rotenone. The agent, called L-AP4, activates a critical group of receptors called group III metabotropic glutamate receptors and may be a promising drug target. Currently there is no known cure for Parkinson's disease. Long-term studies have shown that environmental toxins play a critical role in the development of Parkinson's disease, and it has been shown recently in research with rats that administering rotenone, a naturally occurring substance widely used as a pesticide, destroys dopamine-producing neurons and causes symptoms of Parkinson's disease in this animal model. In the April 19 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, UB researchers lead by Jian Feng, Ph.D., report that activation of group III metabotropic glutamate receptors reverses a cascade of events triggered by rotenone that destroys dopamine neurons. Feng, UB associate professor of physiology and biophysics, and colleagues earlier demonstrated that microtubules, the intracellular highways for transporting dopamine and many vital cellular components, are critical for the survival of dopamine neurons, which are responsible for controlling body movement. © 2006 University at Buffalo.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 8801 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Spring is the season for flashy mates, at least for finches. It is only later in the year that the females choose based on genetic diversity, according to new research from two scientists at the University of Arizona. Their 10-year study of a colony of 12,000 finches in Montana has revealed the seasonal dynamics of finch attraction and thereby resolved an evolutionary conundrum. Previous research had shown that female birds go for the most resplendent mates; in the case of finches, this means the males with the reddest breast. Some scientists argue that such sexual selection is the driving force behind apparently useless displays, such as red breasts or the brilliance of a male peacock's tail. "For such elaborate traits to evolve, you have to have mating patterns where everyone wants the same thing," explains ecologist Kevin Oh. On the other hand, in a relatively stable population, if all females mated with the flashiest guy, the charm of finches would become inbred. Instead, female finches should seek out males with the most genetic difference from themselves. But this would lead to a variety of hues for male finch breasts. "Even though preference for genetically complementary mates is widely documented, it has always puzzled people that individual differences in mate preference do not prevent the evolution of elaborate ornaments," notes ecologist Alexander Badyaev. © 1996-2006 Scientific American, Inc

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 8800 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Cuttlefish are wizards of camouflage. Adept at blending in with their surroundings, cuttlefish are known to have a diverse range of body patterns and can switch between them almost instantaneously. New research from MBL Marine Resources scientists, to appear in the May 2006 issue of the journal Vision Research, confirms that while these masters of disguise change their appearance based on visual cues, they do so while being completely colorblind. While previous research has reported cuttlefish colorblindness, MBL Research Associate Lydia Mäthger and her colleagues in Roger Hanlon’s laboratory approached the problem in more depth and with a new behavioral assay. The researchers tested cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) color perception through observing the animal’s behavioral response to a series of checkerboard patterned substrates of various colors and brightnesses. They found that the animals did not respond to the checkerboard pattern when placed on substrates whose color intensities were matched to the Sepia visual system, suggesting that these checkerboards appeared to their eyes as uniform backgrounds. However, their results showed that cuttlefish were able to detect contrast differences of at least 15%, which Mäthger and her colleagues suspect might be a critical factor in uncovering what determines camouflage patterning in cuttlefish. © 2005 by The Marine Biological LaboratoryTM

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 8799 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), part of the National Institutes of Health, report in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association the results of the first-ever randomized clinical trials to evaluate the safety of placing amalgam fillings, which contain mercury, in the teeth of children. Both studies — one conducted in Europe, the other in the United States — independently reached the conclusion: Children whose cavities were filled with dental amalgam had no adverse health effects. The findings included no detectable loss of intelligence, memory, coordination, concentration, nerve conduction, or kidney function during the 5-7 years the children were followed. The researchers looked for measurable signs of damage to the brain and kidneys because previous studies with adults indicated these organs might be especially sensitive to mercury. The authors noted that children in both studies who received amalgam, informally known as “silver fillings,” had slightly elevated levels of mercury in their urine. But after several years of analysis, they determined the mercury levels remained low and did not correlate with any symptoms of mercury poisoning. “What’s particularly impressive is the strength of the evidence,” said NIDCR director Dr. Lawrence Tabak. “The studies evaluated mercury exposure in two large, geographically distinct groups of children and reached similar conclusions about the safety of amalgam.”

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 8798 - Posted: 06.24.2010