By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Sexual orientation appears to influence how humans perceive the faces of other individuals, according to a new study that analyzed the brain activity of heterosexual and homosexual men and women while they viewed and rated photographs of faces. Scientists previously theorized that assessment of reproductive fitness was the only guiding force behind our gut reaction to faces of potential mates. That theory holds that good bone structure, well-balanced features and sexual dimorphism — manly men and feminine women — subconsciously tell us that a member of the opposite sex likely could produce healthy children. The authors of the new study now believe that other qualities, such as compatibility and companionship, may be just as important. "My personal thought: finding a mate is not only about potential reproduction," said Alumit Ishai, who coauthored the study with Felicitas Kranz. "A mate obviously has other important roles — friendship, intimacy, emotional stability, financial security, etc. My study suggests that these values may be coded by the preferential activity in the (brain's) reward circuitry." Copyright © 2006 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Brain imaging
Link ID: 8496 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jane Elliott Doctors hope they will soon be able to assess exactly how much pain their patients are suffering. As many as one in four people suffer from chronic pain - people like Malcolm Pankhurst who was plagued for years by chronic back pain. Until now, doctors have had to rely on patients' descriptions of their pain. But now researchers at the Pain Clinical Research Hub, based at King's College Hospital (KCH) and the Institute of Psychiatry, London, are using the latest imaging techniques to measure the brain activity of people in pain to get an objective measurement of its intensity. They hope that knowing how much pain the patient is really suffering will teach them whether the treatments they are prescribing are doing enough to help. Malcolm says anything that can help others escape the years of suffering he endured can only be welcomed. He first noticed a problem with his back nearly 10 years ago. Years of sitting hunched over a desk in his job in the banking industry had taken its toll. One New Year, his back started to ache. Within hours he was in excruciating pain unable to sit, and he was rapidly referred for surgery. He suffered three prolapsed discs and severe pains in his leg and foot. The problem became so bad he had to have discs removed. But the pain continued and Malcolm, aged 53, decided to quit his high profile job and set up his own business selling specialised chairs to back pain sufferers like himself. (C)BBC

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Brain imaging
Link ID: 8495 - Posted: 02.06.2006

By Susan Levine Even among the incident reports crossing Craig Knoll's desk weekly now, this one stood out: A 43-year-old client of Knoll's mental health agency, a man who suffers from bipolar disorder, had come from his pharmacy frustrated to the point of meltdown. There were snags in his new Medicare drug plan. Of his four medicines, it would fill only two. "I'm not going to take any of them anymore," he yelled, according to the report by caseworkers. Before they could do anything, he grabbed the prescription bottles he'd just gotten, ran for the restroom and dumped both in the toilet. "He flushed everything he had on hand," recounted Knoll, executive director of Threshold Services in Silver Spring, whose staff spent day after day last month grappling with the many ramifications of the government's troubled program. Threshold came to the rescue of clients who couldn't get any medications or who, despite their pills, were in increasing distress because of all the confusion. It reimbursed several who'd mistakenly paid hundreds of dollars for pills that should have cost them a few dollars -- and replenished the supply of the client who had thrown his away. "I'm not saying it's the federal government's fault he flushed his meds," Knoll said. "I'm saying it's the federal government's fault he couldn't get his meds. It's not surprising that people with mental illness respond in ways that people with mental illness respond." © 2006 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 8494 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG Liars always look to the left, several friends say; liars always cover their mouths, says a man sitting next to me on a plane. Beliefs about how lying looks are plentiful and often contradictory: depending on whom you choose to believe, liars can be detected because they fidget a lot, hold very still, cross their legs, cross their arms, look up, look down, make eye contact or fail to make eye contact. Freud thought anyone could spot deception by paying close enough attention, since the liar, he wrote, "chatters with his finger-tips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore." Nietzsche wrote that "the mouth may lie, but the face it makes nonetheless tells the truth." This idea is still with us, the notion that liars are easy to spot. Just last month, Charles Bond, a psychologist at Texas Christian University, reported that among 2,520 adults surveyed in 63 countries, more than 70 percent believe that liars tend to avert their gazes. The majority also believe that liars squirm, stutter, touch or scratch themselves or tell longer stories than usual. The liar stereotype exists in just about every culture, Bond wrote, and its persistence "would be less puzzling if we had more reason to imagine that it was true." What is true, instead, is that there are as many ways to lie as there are liars; there's no such thing as a dead giveaway. Most people think they're good at spotting liars, but studies show otherwise. A very small minority of people, probably fewer than 5 percent, seem to have some innate ability to sniff out deception with accuracy. But in general, even professional lie-catchers, like judges and customs officials, perform, when tested, at a level not much better than chance. In other words, even the experts would have been right almost as often if they had just flipped a coin. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 8493 - Posted: 02.06.2006

Tastebuds alone do not determine what something tastes like. Researchers have demonstrated that expectation, too, plays a role. Previous research in primates had suggested that expectation had little effect on how taste registers in the brain. Neuroscientist Jack Nitschke and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin lined up 30 college-age volunteers to see whether the same holds true for humans. The neuroscience team prepared five drinks containing water mixed with varying amounts of quinine or sugar and paired them with five signs: water with a strong concentration of quinine linked to a minus sign; water with a milder concentration got a crossed-out minus sign; simple distilled water received a zero; and water with either a mild or strong concentration of sugar got the plus sign equivalents of their negative counterparts. After three trial runs, the students had learned the associations. The researchers then loaded the subjects into an fMRI machine for the next stage of the experiment. This time, however, they mixed the signs and drinks. For example, the crossed-out minus sign--initially paired with the milder quinine mixture--sometimes preceded the bitterest drink during the eight tastings in the machine. © 1996-2006 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 8492 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY At this rate, it seems that neuroscientists will soon pinpoint the regions in the brain where mediocre poetry is generated, where high school grudges are lodged, where sarcasm blooms like a red rose. In the last month alone, researchers working with brain imaging machines have captured the neural trace of schadenfreude and the emotional flare of partisan thinking and whatever happens between the ears of a happily married woman when her husband takes her hand. As the magnetic resonance imaging machines produce pictures with higher resolution — and that is happening fast — hundreds of such studies are being published in scientific journals each month. Meanwhile, a parallel stream of popularizing books, magazines and newspapers, including this one, are publicizing an ever-enlarging array of the now familiar red, gray and blue graphics of imaged brains, and some of them are making extravagant claims for their significance. Already, lawyers have used M.R.I. brain images to help reduce criminal sentences, arguing that their clients' actions can partly be explained by the way their brains function, or malfunction. Some researchers say their imaging methods can help detect lies. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 8491 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The ability of a cell to sense its position within a tissue may help explain why some people become obese, scientists believe. An international team is focusing on an inherited syndrome that causes obesity in children, among other symptoms. They suspect that part of the problem could be faults in cells in the part of the brain that controls appetite. The cells may lack normal location sense and migrate to the wrong place, they told Nature Genetics. The condition the researchers are studying is called Bardet-Biedl syndrome, or BBS, but they believe their work could shed light on obesity in general. Children born with BBS are obese and go blind and develop kidney failure. Past work has uncovered at least eight faulty genes that can cause the disorder, but it is still not clear exactly how. Professor Peter Beales from University College London Institute of Child Health, working with colleagues from Canada, France and the US, has discovered a possible cell function that may go amiss in BBS. By looking at a mouse model of BBS, they found there were problems with tiny hair-like projections on cells, known as cilia. These hairs are important for telling the cell where in the body it is positioned in relation to other cells. Without this function the cell can get lost. They believe such malfunction could play a role in the symptoms of BBS and its related obesity. (C)BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 8490 - Posted: 02.04.2006

Helen Pearson Expecting the worst may not make you feel any better when faced with a disappointment, say psychology researchers who have tested the age-old advice. Most people believe that mentally preparing for the worst outcome in an examination or race will soften the disappointment if we flunk or flop - and heighten the joy if we succeed. But the idea has rarely been put on scientific trial. Margaret Marshall of Seattle Pacific University and Jonathon Brown of the University of Washington, Seattle, did just that. They first asked more than 80 college students to fill in questionnaires that measured their general emotional outlook on life - whether bright or gloomy. The students then practised a set of moderately difficult word-association puzzles on a computer. Based on this, they rated how well they expected to perform on a second set of such problems. The team then gave half the students problems that were slightly easier than the first set, while half were given more difficult puzzles. This ensured that the students' performances would either exceed, or fall short of, their expectations. Afterwards, the subjects filled in a questionnaire to measure their emotional reaction, such as how disappointed or ashamed they felt. Students who expected to do badly, the researchers found, actually felt worse when they messed up than those who predicted they would do well but similarly botched their test. © 2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 8489 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Women who feel that they become more forgetful as menopause approaches shouldn't just "fuhgetabout it": There may be something to their own widespread reports that they're more likely to forget things as menopause approaches, say scientists who reported results from a small study today at the annual meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society in Boston. The team from the University of Rochester Medical Center found that the issue is not really impaired memory. Instead, the team found a link between complaints of forgetfulness and the way middle-aged, stressed women learn or "encode" new information. "This is not what most people think of traditionally when they think of memory loss," said co-author Mark Mapstone, Ph.D., assistant professor of Neurology. "It feels like a memory problem, but the cause is different. It feels like you can't remember, but that's because you never really learned the information in the first place." The findings come from Mapstone and Miriam Weber, Ph.D., memory experts at the University's Memory Disorders Clinic who are seeing more and more middle-aged women who say they are having problems with forgetfulness. "We see a lot of women who are afraid they are losing their minds," said Weber, a senior instructor of Neurology, who presented the results. "A lot of women complain that their thinking or their memory isn't what it used to be. Their big fear is that it's early Alzheimer's disease."

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 8488 - Posted: 02.04.2006

By Laurance Doyle The Native American tribe known as the Tlinket of southeast Alaska have many stories about how raven stole the Sun, how bear and ant argued about the constellations, and how the wolf and moon are related. But as far as I know, they don’t have any stories about the humpback whale. If they did, they might have told how the humpback gave voices to all the other animals, for this creature has all the voices of the animal kingdom. We have recorded humpbacks making sounds like the trumpeting of elephants, roars like lions, whistles like dolphins, clicks like the sperm whale, mooing like cows, chattering like monkeys, and several very human-like vocalizations—some even sounding like an unusual language, with exclamations like "whoops!" Although we are just beginning to document and classify all the diverse sounds of the humpback whales, we already expect its repertoire to exceed that of any other animal we have studied to date. The humpbacks of southeast Alaska are known to migrate thousands of miles to Hawaii to mate, where they sing long and complex songs. Several variations of these songs are started at the beginning of the season, then eventually all humpbacks are singing the same song for that year. They head to Alaska in the summer to feed, and here they have a different kind of vocalization based more on feeding needs. However a colleague, Chris Gabriele of Glacier Bay National Park System, has also found that humpback whales still sing even in this feeding season. © 1999-2006 Imaginova Corp.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 8487 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(Philadelphia, PA) – In a mouse model, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers discovered that olfactory sensory neurons expressing the same receptor responded to a specific odor with an array of speeds and sensitivities, a phenomenon previously not detected in the mammalian sense of smell. The group published their findings this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We assumed that the sensory neurons that express the same receptor would respond to a specific odor in the same way," says senior author Minghong Ma, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Penn. "But in real biology, these olfactory neurons keep regenerating, and even though they all express the same receptor, they're probably at different states of maturation, displaying different qualities. By knowing that olfactory neurons can respond differently, we're adding another layer to understanding how the olfactory system receives outside information." Ma's group measured 53 different olfactory neurons that express the MOR23 odor receptor. As a group, the neurons reacted differently from one another in their response to lyral, an artificial odor used in fragrances and flavoring. After subjecting all cells to a short pulse (200-300 milliseconds) of lyral, the researchers measured the cells' sensitivity to the odor. Some cells responded to very low concentrations of lyral; others, to higher concentrations. Regarding the cells' reaction time, some neurons finished firing within 500 milliseconds, but for others, the response time was up to five seconds.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 8486 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Greg Miller Not all placebos are created equal, according to a new study. In a rare trial pitting two fake treatments against each other, researchers have found that a sham acupuncture technique provided more pain relief than a dummy pill. The two nontreatments also caused different "side effects." Placebo effects have been reported with pills, injections, and even surgery. Previous research hinted that some treatments might elicit stronger placebo effects than others, but the idea hadn't been rigorously tested, says Ted Kaptchuk, the researcher at Harvard Medical School in Boston who led the current study. Kaptchuk and colleagues recruited 270 people with repetitive strain injuries (such as the aching arm that results from pushing a computer mouse around a desktop day after day). Half the volunteers took a cornstarch pill once a day; the rest received a fake acupuncture treatment twice a week. Both groups were told they would receive either a placebo or real treatment during the trial and that they could receive real treatment afterwards free of charge. The needles used in the procedure looked identical to real acupuncture needles, but the point retracted into a hollow shaft instead of penetrating the skin. The vast majority of people can't feel the difference between the sham procedure and the real deal, Kaptchuk says. © 2006 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 8485 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Humans who smell a pillow, shirt, shoe or other object that was in close contact with another person may be reminded of a certain someone. New research suggests squirrels have a similar ability to not only associate smells with particular squirrels, but to also create mental images of them. The study, published in this month's Animal Behavior, represents the first time the ability has been demonstrated in rodents. A second, not-yet-published study by other researchers indicates hamsters also have the skill. Like humans, squirrels must first be familiar with an individual before an odor can become associated with that other animal. A husband, for example, could smell his wife's perfume in an elevator and be reminded of her, but a perfume he has never smelled before could trigger no such memories. "Squirrels need to be familiar with others to be able to put all of an individual's odors into a representation of that individual, as if repeated interactions make that individual meaningful, and thus worthy of remembering at this level," explained Jill Mateo, who conducted the research. © 2006 Discovery Communications Inc

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Learning & Memory
Link ID: 8484 - Posted: 06.24.2010

UCI researchers have found that a single brief memory is actually processed differently in separate areas of the brain – an idea that until now scientists have only suspected to be true. The finding will influence how researchers examine the brain and could have implications for the treatment of memory disorders caused by disease or injury. The results were published this week in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In a study using rats, researchers Emily L. Malin and James L. McGaugh of UCI’s Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory demonstrate that while one part of the brain, the hippocampus, is involved in processing memory for context, the anterior cingulate cortex, a part of the cerebral cortex, is responsible for retaining memories involving unpleasant stimuli. A third area, the amygdala, located in the temporal lobe, consolidates memories more broadly and influences the storage of both contextual and unpleasant information. © Copyright 2002-2006 UC Regents

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 8483 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New Haven, Conn.--Increasing the level of a protein that plays a key role in traumatic spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis reduces the concentration of disease-causing plaque in Alzheimer's disease, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in the Journal of Neuroscience. "Our new findings indicate that pharmacological methods to increase the protein, NogoReceptor, may be a way to treat the deficits associated with Alzheimer's disease," said Stephen Strittmatter, M.D., senior author of the study and co-director of the new program in Cellular Neuroscience, Neurodegeneration and Repair at Yale. It is well known that the clinical dementia of Alzheimer's disease is associated with specific pathological changes in the brain. One such change is deposits of the peptide beta-amyloid in brain plaques, a hallmark of the disease. Nerve fibers also play a crucial role in the neurodegenerative process of Alzheimer's disease. "We asked whether those mechanisms that regulate nerve fiber growth might lessen the Alzheimer's disease process," said Strittmatter, professor in the Departments of Neurology and Neurobiology. In brain sections from Alzheimer's patients, the protein NogoReceptor is distributed in an unusual pattern in conjunction with beta-amyloid peptide, which is the primary component of plaque that forms in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease, he said.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 8482 - Posted: 02.03.2006

Roxanne Khamsi Just one sniff is all it takes for a rat to tell whether an odour comes from the left or the right, new research reveals, suggesting rats smell in stereo. The rodent impressed scientists in the lab by processing the location of a smell in a mere 50 milliseconds. Researchers have long sought to understand how human brains pick up on the source of a scent, but their experiments remain limited by the resolution of brain scanning technologies. Upinder Bhalla of the University of Agricultural Science in Bangalore, India, says that more precise tests can be conducted on rats, using specialised brain and nose probes. “In rats we can do the experiment definitively, monitoring exactly when they’re sniffing, “says Bhalla. Bhalla and his colleagues exposed rats to various odours and recorded information via probes in the animals’ olfactory bulb, the region of the brain called that first processes smells. They found that 90% of the cells in this brain region respond differently depending on whether a scent first enters the left or right nostril. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 8481 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An American study has suggested women with major depression risk a recurrence of their condition if they stop taking their drugs during pregnancy. It had been thought the hormone changes which occur during pregnancy gave a "protective" effect against depression. But the Journal of the American Medical Association study of 201 pregnant women found this was not true, and women who came off their medication relapsed. A UK expert agreed it was better for pregnant women to stay on their drugs. Dr Veronica O'Keane said the only exception was paroxetine, which a study last year suggested could be linked to birth defects. In this latest study, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston studied 201 pregnant women between 1999 and 2003, who were treated at centres which focussed on the care of psychiatric illness during pregnancy. All the participants had a history of major depression prior to pregnancy, were less than 16 weeks pregnant, and were either current or recent users of anti-depressants. Among women who maintained their medication throughout the pregnancy, 26% (21 out of 82) relapsed compared with 68% (44 out of 65) of those who discontinued their medication. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 8480 - Posted: 02.02.2006

By STEPHANIE COOPERMAN At 5-foot-10 and a mere 133 pounds, Mr. Johnson, 26, a laboratory research assistant in Columbus, Ohio, was mortified by his inability to gain weight. His friends scoffed: We wish we had your problem! Others were skeptical: Why don't you just eat more? Mr. Johnson had tried to bulk up before. Eight years earlier, when he was a student at the University of Mississippi, he was inspired to work out by his roommate, a 6-foot-2, 245-pound bodybuilder. "My arms were twigs," Mr. Johnson lamented. He collected books on weight lifting for guidance, reading many half a dozen times, and he lifted for two hours six days a week. In two years he added 15 pounds of muscle. But then his weight gain stalled. He was bigger, but not big enough. Finally last year Mr. Johnson went online and found what he couldn't get from any Arnold Schwarzenegger fitness manual: advice from people who also had trouble gaining and keeping muscle. He learned from discussion groups and blogs to take rest days between workouts to give his muscles time to recuperate and grow. He began carrying a kitchen timer so he would remember to eat six or seven times a day. Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 8479 - Posted: 02.02.2006

Scientists from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Brandeis University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology report in the February 2 issue of the journal Neuron that increasing levels of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) alleviates symptoms in a mouse model of the childhood disorder Rett Syndrome. Rett Syndrome (RTT) is a severe neurological disorder diagnosed almost exclusively in girls. Children with RTT appear to develop normally until 6 to 18 months of age, when they enter a period of regression, losing speech and motor skills. Most develop repetitive hand movements, irregular breathing patterns, seizures and extreme motor control problems. RTT leaves its victims profoundly disabled, requiring maximum assistance with every aspect of daily living. There is no cure. In late 2003 Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute and Michael Greenberg of Children's Hospital Boston announced that the "Rett Syndrome gene", Mecp2, interacts with bdnf. Interestingly, BDNF is highly active in infants aged 6 to 18 months, the same age that RTT symptoms first appear. BDNF is essential for neural plasticity (ability of neural circuits to undergo changes in function or organization due to previous activity), learning and memory. BDNF is also implicated in other neurological disorders including Huntington's Disease, schizophrenia and depression.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Trophic Factors
Link ID: 8478 - Posted: 02.02.2006

By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News — Neanderthals did not disappear because modern humans were better hunters and thus out-competed them for resources, according to U.S. and Israeli anthropologists. On the contrary, they were top predators who knew how to hunt the biggest and fastest of the animals. Neanderthals went extinct about 30,000 years ago, after having inhabited Europe and parts of Asia for roughly 200,000 years. The reason for their demise has been long debated and frequently attributed to modern humans' greater intelligence and consequently greater hunting skills. However, evidence from animal remains hunted by Neanderthals clearly indicates that these hominids were as good as any early modern humans at hunting, Daniel Adler, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, and colleagues report in the February issue of the journal Current Anthropology. The researchers examined abundant faunal remains, in particular thousands of bones belonging to a mountain goat species called the Caucasian tur that still exists today. The trove was excavated at Ortvale Klde, a rock shelter in the southern Caucasus in the Republic of Georgia dated to 60,000-20,000 years ago. Copyright © 2006 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 8477 - Posted: 06.24.2010