There is no evidence the hormone melatonin is effective in preventing jet lag or treating sleep disorders, research has found. Melatonin plays a role in controlling daily body rhythms, and has become popular in supplement form to treat sleep problems. The University of Alberta study suggests there is little evidence to support this. But UK experts have challenged the British Medical Journal study. Melatonin is produced naturally by the pineal gland in the brain. Research has shown that levels rise at night and fall in the morning. The researchers looked at the use of melatonin to treat people with 'secondary' sleep problems, often caused by medical or psychological conditions, or substance misuse They also assessed whether the hormone could help people with disturbed or restricted sleep, such as shift workers, or those with jet lag. In total, they examined data from 16 trials including more than 500 people. Melatonin had no significant impact - either on increasing amount of sleep, or reducing the time taken to fall asleep - among people with disturbed or restricted sleep. It did increase amount of sleep among people with secondary sleep problems. But the effect was so small - less than 10 minutes extra sleep in an eight-hour period spent in bed - that the researchers dismissed it as clinically unimportant. (C)BBC

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 8516 - Posted: 02.10.2006

Misfolded and damaged proteins are common to all human neurodegenerative diseases. Clumps of these aggregated proteins destroy neurons within the brain and cause disease. But explanations for the mechanism that actually causes cell death have varied widely, puzzling scientists and leading them to ask whether Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's and Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseases and familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are related diseases or very different diseases. Northwestern University scientists now offer a clue that may get to the core of the cell death question and establish a common mechanism in these diseases. In a study to be published online Feb. 9 by the journal Science, the research team shows that polyglutamine (the toxic component of the protein responsible for Huntington's disease) is so demanding on the cell's system that it changes the environment within the cell, causing other metastable, or partially folded, proteins to crash and lose function. Over time, this can cause the organism to die. "Our results suggest that these disease-associated, aggregation-prone proteins may exert their destabilizing effects by interfering generally with other proteins that are having difficulty folding," said Richard I. Morimoto, Bill and Gayle Cook Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Cell Biology, who led the study. Morimoto is an expert in Huntington's disease and on the cellular and molecular response to damaged proteins.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Huntingtons
Link ID: 8515 - Posted: 02.10.2006

Falling in love can make us behave quite differently oddly. We'll give up all our worldly possessions, travel half way around the globe and completely change our lives to be with the people we love. A British king, Edward VIII, even gave up his throne for love. "You will do quite irrational things, or inventive things. You might even get up, and jump up and down on a couch," says neuroscientist Lucy L. Brown, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. Brown discovered that the intoxicating feeling of falling in love is not an emotion. It's a reward — produced by an unconscious brain system, much older than other systems and therefore considered essential to survival. This primitive reward system is shared by many animals and is similar to the one that motivates us to find food when we're hungry, or water when we're thirsty. "It suggests that the person we're in love with is a goal that we must have, just in the same way that we must have food or water," Brown says. "We can have varied emotions around love — happiness, anxiety, even anger sometimes — but the most important aspect of love is this core motivation that drives us." © ScienCentral, 2000-2006.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 8514 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A Florida State University scientist used a gene transfer technique to block the expression of a gene associated with clinical depression in a new study of mice that could lead to better treatment of human beings with this condition. Carlos Bolanos, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience, was among a team of researchers that identified the role of a gene called Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) in the development of social aversion. Mice treated with a transfer technique to block expression of the BDNF gene in a small area of the mid-brain did not develop the aversion despite repeated encounters with aggressive rodents. The study will be published in the Feb. 10 issue of the journal Science. "It's very exciting because we are slowly but surely identifying mechanisms in the brain underlying psychiatric disorders that have a social withdrawal component, such as social phobia, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and that will allow us to find better ways to treat these disorders," Bolanos said. "This study is significant because it gives us an animal model of the disorder and opens up new areas of study." In the experiment, the researchers subjected mice to daily bouts of social threats and subordination by aggressive rodents and continuous sensory contact with the aggressors for 10 days. Afterward, the defeated mice avoided any social contact by spending most of their time in the corner of their cages opposite other mice, including those that had not been aggressive toward them.

Keyword: Depression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 8513 - Posted: 02.10.2006

Helen Pearson A single genetic change can render mice immune to the consequences of hostile bullying, and this may point the way to drugs for social phobias and depression. Mice, somewhat like people, become withdrawn and unhappy when they are exposed to other, aggressive mice. Now a team led by Eric Nestler at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas has exposed what is going on in the brains of these introverted animals. The researchers placed a small, brown mouse of one strain in a cage with a larger, white, aggressive mouse from another. "They're just naturally mean mice," Nestler says of the intimidating white strain. After ten daily bouts with a different tyrant, the brown mice seemed socially scarred. Even a month after the bullying sessions, normally gregarious animals clung to the corner of their cage, shying away from both white mice and familiar brown ones. The researchers showed that these social problems are controlled by a reward circuit in the brain that is known to tell the animals that food, sex and drugs are gratifying. They did this by taking a group of mice and removing a key protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) from this reward circuit. Mice lacking BDNF were no longer browbeaten by the aggressive mice, they found. The researchers suggest that BDNF is needed for the animals to learn that bullying mice are very far from rewarding, and are actually horrible. ©2006 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Trophic Factors
Link ID: 8512 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists hope a new drug could cut the risk of serious disability following a stroke. A trial, led by Glasgow University researchers, involving more than 1,700 patients in 154 hospitals worldwide has produced promising results. The treatment, known as NXY-059, works by minimising brain damage in the early hours after an clot-related stroke. Stroke is one of the most common causes of death and long-term disability around the world. A clot-related, or ischaemic, stroke is caused by a blockage in the blood vessels supplying the brain. It can cause symptoms including facial weakness, arm weakness and problems speaking. But it is estimated that under 1% of stroke patients in the UK currently receive drugs to reduce the risk of further clots. During the latest trial, patients were examined when they arrived at hospital within six hours of developing symptoms of a stroke. Half were given normal fluids through a drip, while the others received normal fluids and NXY-059. Lead researcher Professor Kennedy Lees said: "Patients who were given this new drug were more likely to have made a full recovery from stroke after three months." (C)BBC

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 8511 - Posted: 02.09.2006

By GARDINER HARRIS WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 — Twenty-five people died suddenly and 54 others suffered serious unexplained heart problems while taking stimulant drugs like Ritalin from 1999 through 2003, according to reports sent to federal drug regulators. It is impossible to determine whether the deaths and injuries resulted from the drugs or from other factors, federal drug regulators wrote in a 2004 report released publicly Wednesday. But stimulant drugs are among the most widely prescribed medicines in the world, and so any hint that they may cause health problems leads to intense concern. Few mental health experts believe that the drugs are dangerous. "Controlled trials have never found anything" suggesting that drugs to treat hyperactivity injure the heart, said Dr. Tom Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. Children accounted for 19 of the deaths noted in the 2004 report and 26 of the serious heart problems, and the report, using the abbreviation for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, said, "The rare occurrence of pediatric sudden death during stimulant therapy of A.D.H.D. is an issue that warrants close monitoring." An advisory committee for the Food and Drug Administration will meet Thursday to discuss the report and recommend ways to research whether the drugs are to blame for the deaths. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 8510 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new study of fossil foot bones across human history suggests that some of our very early ancestors had a rather peculiar way of walking. Anthropologists Dan Gebo of Northern Illinois University and Gary Schwartz of Arizona State University analyzed heel and anklebone casts of five separate species of human ancestors to understand how human walking changed over time. The study identifies the earliest foot bones belonging to the genus Homo, the same grouping of species that includes Homo sapiens, and highlights intriguing differences found among even earlier human ancestors. “Most people have argued that the foot bones of our human ancestors aren't all that different, but that's not the case,” said Gebo, a world authority on hominid foot bones. “The pattern of biomechanical changes that leads to the way modern humans walk today clearly took millions of years. “With the earlier species of human ancestors that we analyzed, it's clear that their feet didn't work exactly like ours. This implies subtle gait changes over time.” Gebo and Schwartz will report their findings in an upcoming edition of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. ©PhysOrg.com 2003-2006

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 8509 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered that a long-approved oral antipsychotic drug can stop the addictive properties of opioid painkillers in mice. The researchers injected a small dose (half a milligram) of trifluoperazine -- used in the treatment of mental diseases such as schizophrenia -- into laboratory mice hooked on morphine. After a few hours their addiction was gone, said Z. Jim Wang, assistant professor of pharmacology in the UIC College of Pharmacy. This is the first time any study has shown the anti-addictive property of trifluoperazine, Wang said. "From studies conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, we know that trifluoperazine inhibits calmodulin," Wang said, a molecule that is required for the activation of an enzyme called calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase-2. "In previous studies we performed at UIC, we know that CaMK-2 plays an important role in the generation and maintenance of opioid tolerance," he said. Tolerance is a hallmark of drug dependence. "Trifluoperazine targets this pathway, which then stops the addiction," Wang said. "When this occurs, you can still use a relatively low dose of the painkiller to achieve fairly good pain control and no drug dependence."

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 8508 - Posted: 02.09.2006

Brain images of children with dyslexia taken before they received spelling instruction show that they have different patterns of neural activity than do good spellers when doing language tasks related to spelling. But after specialized treatment emphasizing the letters in words, they showed similar patterns of brain activity. These findings are important because they show the human brain can change and normalize in response to spelling instruction, even in dyslexia, the most common learning disability. The research is unique in that it looks at images of individual brains rather than the composite group images, or maps, that are typically produced to show which areas of the brain are activated when people are engaged in specific tasks. Being able to study how individual brains differ between good and poor spellers and how they normalize after receiving one of two treatments is an important advance, according to University of Washington neuroimaging scientist Todd Richards and neuropsychologist Virginia Berninger, who headed the research team. The new findings were published in the January issue of the journal Neurolinguistics. "Most people think dyslexia is a reading disorder, but it is also a spelling and writing problem," said Berninger, who directs the UW's Learning Disabilities Center. "Our results show that all dyslexics in the 9- to 12-year-old range have spelling problems and children who cannot spell cannot express their ideas in writing."

Keyword: Dyslexia
Link ID: 8507 - Posted: 02.09.2006

Roxanne Khamsi Prenatal exposure to certain antidepressants appears to increase a newborn’s risk of exhibiting drug withdrawal symptoms and respiratory abnormalities, according to two new studies. Researchers behind the studies urge doctors to carefully consider these findings before prescribing this type of medication to pregnant women. The use of SSRI antidepressants in pregnant women increased the risk of a respiratory disorder – persistent pulmonary hypertension (PPHN) – in the newborn by 600%. This was the finding of a new retrospective study which included 377 women whose infants had the disorder. SSRIs, or selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors, work by increasing the availability of the chemical messenger serotonin in the body. Mothers of infants with PPHN were interviewed by Christina Chambers at the University of California, San Diego, US, and colleagues to determine how many of them used SSRIs during pregnancy. The team then compared this with the use of SSRIs among mothers of healthy babies. Their analysis showed that women using these antidepressants after the 20th week of gestation had a higher risk of giving birth to a baby with PPHN. This relatively rare respiratory disorder occurs in an estimated one to two infants per 1000 live births in the US. It is a dangerous condition and, despite treatment, 10% to 20% of affected newborns do not survive. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 8506 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD SANTA FE, N.M., Feb. 7 — Against the vivid backdrop of recent killings by mentally ill people, both sides in the national debate over whether mentally ill people who have not committed a crime can be forced into treatment are preparing for a showdown in the Legislature here. New Mexico lawmakers are considering a bill, backed by Gov. Bill Richardson, that would make the state the 43rd with a law allowing family members, doctors or others to seek a court order forcing the mentally ill into outpatient treatment. Typically under the laws, if mentally ill people refuse the treatment, they can face confinement in a hospital. Across the country, proponents have pushed the laws as a pragmatic approach to the mentally ill who fall through the cracks of the mental health system, particularly those who have committed no crime but could harm themselves or others as their sickness worsens. These mentally ill people often do not need to be in a hospital, but do need to stick to treatment, which could include medication, therapy or both. "We are talking about a small group of people who do not get help because they don't want help or know they need help," Mary T. Zdanowicz, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, based in Virginia, said in a break from lobbying lawmakers here. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 8505 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A single change in a particular brain hormone can increase a person's risk of obesity, two new studies in the February 8, 2006, Cell Metabolism reveal. The researchers found that obese children are more likely to carry a rare variant of so-called ß-melanocyte-stimulating hormone (ß-MSH) than children of normal weight. The findings implicate the hormone in the maintenance of normal body weight and suggest that drugs that mimic the chemical might offer a new avenue for obesity treatment, report the studies' lead authors Stephen O'Rahilly, of the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research in the United Kingdom, and Heiko Krude, of Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin in Germany. The hormone's important role in maintaining body weight had been overlooked primarily because mice and rats, the subjects of much obesity research, do not produce the chemical, they added. Earlier studies had focused their attention almost entirely on the related chemical α-MSH, a hormone derived from the same precursor protein that is known to suppress appetite in humans and rodents. "The assumption had been that α-MSH was most important at keeping energy balanced in people," O'Rahilly said. "The new studies point the finger at the neglected sibling, ß-MSH."

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 8504 - Posted: 02.09.2006

LIFTING a finger is easy. What is far more difficult is understanding how our brains sense that it has moved. For over a century scientists have struggled to understand which parts of the nervous system allow the body to sense its own position in space. Now Simon Gandevia of the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues have devised a technique which clearly demonstrates that the brain only has to send a command to a limb to create the sensation of movement. Their discovery goes some way to resolving the enigma of whether motor commands or receptors in the skin, joints and muscles are more important for creating a feeling of movement. Gandevia's team studied eight volunteers, by either anaesthetising their forearm and hand, or restricting the flow of blood to the limb. Both techniques deadened sensation to the extent that the volunteers felt they had a "phantom" hand with fingers clenched, though in fact their fingers were fully extended. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 8503 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Denise Winterman Nearly half of the British children with an eating disorder feel unable to talk about their problem, says a report from the Eating Disorders Association (EDA). It is estimated that more than a million people in the UK have anorexia or bulimia and many of them are young. The report says eating disorders are still misunderstood and mistaken, sometimes seen as trivial and self-inflicted when they are actually serious and life-threatening mental illnesses. Early treatment is vital if people are to avoid long-term consequences to their physical and mental health, but many youngsters keep their condition secret - including one such teenager who has kept a diary of her relationship with food. Sarah - not her real name - lives in Manchester with her mother and sister. The 18-year-old student has had an eating disorder for four years. Here she details how food dominated her last week. MONDAY Monday usually starts with a list of resolutions about what food I am not going to allow myself to eat in the next week. I want to control what I eat and get a feeling of excitement at the strict targets I set myself. When I am at college it is easy to do. The hard part starts when I get home from college. My family know I have a problem and insist on family meal times. (C)BBC

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 8502 - Posted: 02.07.2006

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR The results of two new studies underscore the quandary that faces women taking antidepressants who are pregnant or plan to be. In one, researchers report that pregnancy, contrary to widespread belief, provides no protection against emotional or psychiatric problems, suggesting that stopping antidepressants may be dangerous for both mother and child. The other study confirms previous research showing that 30 percent of pregnant women who take antidepressants have babies who exhibit symptoms of drug withdrawal. The first study, published last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association, found that women with major depression who stopped their medication relapsed more than two and a half times as often as women who continued to take antidepressants. Dr. Lee S. Cohen, the lead author on the study and a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, emphasized that this was an observational study of women who were already taking the drugs, and not a randomized trial. Two of the authors have consulted for pharmaceutical companies that make antidepressants or have accepted research money from them. Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 8501 - Posted: 02.07.2006

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. For wildly hallucinatory visions in an atmosphere of sheer terror, nothing has quite brought back the one LSD trip I took in college like getting cataract surgery. Back then, I tried to go to Disneyland — a stupendously bad idea. This time I was in an equally controlling environment, my head taped to an operating table with a black spiderlike thing holding my eye open as a pink glob in front of it pulsed to the music. But at least this time, the masked authority figures were friendly. There were two other major differences. It was all over in 10 minutes. And I was drug free. Modern cataract surgery is remarkable. I remember my grandmother having her cataracts fixed, and she was laid up for days, wearing a patch that would have made her look piratical, except it was flesh-colored. I left the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary wearing a clear plastic lid that made my eye look like a piece of takeout sushi. Unlike my grandmother, I could see. Moreover, I felt well enough to risk having oysters for lunch, something one wouldn't sensibly do after anesthesia. Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 8500 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JAMES GORMAN English literature is rife with references to the smelling of rats, as in the classic verse report on maternal care in Felis silvestris catus: "What! washed your mittens, you are good kittens. But I smell a rat close by." The scientific literature, on the other hand, is more concerned with how rats smell — that is to say, how they detect and process odors. And the answer, reported in the current issue of the journal Science, is — in stereo. Rats, as many of us inside and outside of neuroscience have suspected, use their sense of smell to find the source of odors, good and bad. They and other animals are much better at this task than humans. Witness the common behavior patterns of juvenile human males, who are so incompetent at pinpointing the location of unpleasant odors that they discuss the problem endlessly. Rats have no such problem, as Raghav Rajan, James P. Clement and Upinder S. Bhalla at the University of Agricultural Science in Bangalore, India, have recently demonstrated. They trained rats to associate an odor with water. Then the rats had to determine whether the odor was coming from the left or the right. This was done with a contraption that Mr. Wizard would have loved. Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 8499 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Two Dartmouth researchers are one step closer to defining exactly when human maturity sets in. In a study aimed at identifying how and when a person's brain reaches adulthood, the scientists have learned that, anatomically, significant changes in brain structure continue after age 18. The study, called "Anatomical Changes in the Emerging Adult Brain," appeared in the Nov. 29, 2005, on-line issue of the journal Human Brain Mapping. It will appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal's print edition. Abigail Baird, Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and co-author of the study, explains that their finding is fascinating because the study closely tracked a group of freshman students throughout their first year of college. She says that this research contributes to the growing body of literature devoted to the period of human development between adolescence and adulthood. "During the first year of college, especially at a residential college, students have many new experiences," says Baird. "They are faced with new cognitive, social, and emotional challenges. We thought it was important to document and learn from the changes taking place in their brains." The results indicate that significant changes took place in the brains of these individuals. The changes were localized to regions of the brain known to integrate emotion and cognition. Specifically, these are areas that take information from our current body state and apply it for use in navigating the world. Copyright © 2006 Trustees of Dartmouth College

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 8498 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Berkeley -- University of California, Berkeley, researchers have discovered a new actor in the mammalian reproductive system, a hormone that fills a role long suspected, but until now undetected. The hormone, a small protein, or peptide, called gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH), puts the brakes on reproduction by directly inhibiting the action of the central hormone of the reproductive system - gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH). GnRH stimulates the pituitary gland to activate the reproductive system, whereas GnIH appears to reduce the effects of GnRH stimulation. Researchers have long sought inhibitors of pituitary gonadotropins, but many had come to believe that such a direct inhibitor was unlikely in the complex cast of hormones and factors in the reproductive system. The inhibiting or braking hormone may complement the "gas pedal" role played by another recently discovered hormone, kisspeptin, that stimulates GnRH. The discovery in rats, mice and hamsters of this new system for regulating reproduction strongly suggests that the hormone plays a similar role in the reproductive systems of humans and other mammals. The human genome, in fact, contains a gene for GnIH.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 8497 - Posted: 02.07.2006