By Justin Gillis The Food and Drug Administration yesterday approved an inhaled form of insulin, the first new way to get that hormone into the body since it was discovered in 1921 -- and a new treatment option for many of the 21 million Americans with diabetes. The approval fulfills an arduous scientific quest that spanned most of the 20th century and spilled over to the 21st. And it marks the biggest change in diabetes treatment in decades, one that doctors hope will lure a fair slice of the American population into their offices to talk about controlling blood sugar. The product poses long-term safety questions, though, and it's not clear yet whether it will be more expensive than standard insulin. Millions of Americans need treatment with insulin but don't get it because it involves frequent, painful needle sticks and injections. About 5 million take the hormone, but a high proportion inject themselves too few times during the day because it's so inconvenient. Doctors hope inhaled insulin will overcome some of that resistance, helping diabetics ward off a slew of medical problems that afflict those who don't control their disease. © 2006 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 8456 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Karen Heyman Researchers have found a way to use femtosecond lasers to cause strokes deep in the brains of rats. The technique should help researchers create more realistic rodent models of stroke and aid the search for human therapies. There are two basic types of stroke: an ischemic stroke, in which a blood vessel is blocked, and a hemorrhagic stroke, in which a blood vessel ruptures and bleeds out. In both cases, the tissue fed by the vessel dies because it doesn't receive enough oxygen. Existing whole animal stroke models cannot separate these different aspects properly for study. In addition, researchers are seeking to create "microstrokes," in which only one small, individual blood vessel is damaged. An accumulation of microstrokes can cause cognitive deficits that are often confused with the initial symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. To help develop a better rat model for strokes, physicist David Kleinfeld, neurologist Patrick Lyden, and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, turned to femtosecond lasers. Traditionally used for cutting material such as glass, the lasers create short, high-energy pulses of light. Using the lasers on living brain tissue for the first time, the team found that, when concentrated to a precise point, the femtosecond laser light vaporized tissue in rats, creating either blockages or ruptures in individual blood vessels, depending on the intensity. © 2006 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 8455 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Susan Milius As the morning mists rose on the slopes of Ecuador's Pasochoa volcano, the burbling of plain-tailed wrens came through the bamboo thickets. Two researchers started their standard procedure of catching wrens, banding them, and letting them go. Soon, however, they were startled when a small cluster of wrens settled into a bush and began singing together. It turned out to be "one of the most complex singing performances yet described in a nonhuman animal," says Nigel Mann. Mann, of the State University of New York at Oneonta, and a colleague had gone to Pasochoa in the summer of 2002 as part of a team that was surveying of the 28-or-so species of the bird genus Thryothorus. That genus is famous for musical duets, in which a male and a female alternate phrases, sometimes so rapidly that it sounds like one song. Ecuador's plain-tailed wrens (Thryothorus euophrys), relatives of North America's Carolina wren, make a rhythmic, bubbling song together. Most other wrens in this genus pair off and fiercely defend a territory. "If [four wrens] actually got within a few feet of each other, they'd be fighting," says Mann. That's why he and Kimberly A. Dingess of Indiana University at Bloomington were so surprised to find several plain-tailed wrens sharing a bush. "It took a few hours of wandering around for us to realize we had a group-living species," Mann says. Copyright ©2006 Science Service.

Keyword: Language; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 8454 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Why does one person like to skydive or ski off cliffs while someone else is happy reading a book? After studying mouse behavior, scientists now have a clue into a certain gene that may be a factor. Jim Olson of Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute led the team making the discovery. The gene, called neurod2, helps in the formation of a part of the brain called the amygdala. Olson says the gene, "Turns on all the other genes that are needed for a [stem] cell to become a nerve cell [for the brain] instead of some other kind of cell." The amygdala is important in the process of thrill seeking because it is the part of that's brain central to your emotions and your ability to sense danger. It's designed to keep us out of dangerous situations by helping us store in our long-term memory moments that are especially frightening or emotionally stressful. Olson offers his own example of a negative emotional memory from scout camp: he describes counselors sounding a siren at all hours that signaled a water rescue drill. "For almost a year after that, every time I heard a siren I'd get sick to my stomach," he says. Mice normally have two copies of the neurod2 gene. But Olson's team modified mice to have either just one copy or no copies of the gene. As they reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they then studied the mice's behavior as compared with normal mice. © ScienCentral, 2000-2006.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 8453 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Does the sight of a snake make you squirm? Perhaps taking to the air makes you feel faint. Or maybe just the thought of going outside brings you out in a cold sweat. For some, fears are just an inconvenience, but for people who suffer from fear and anxiety disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and phobias, fear can be a major part of their day and even restrict how they live their lives. But even deeply ingrained fears can be unlearned, says New York University psychologist and neuroscientist Liz Phelps. And she's used brain imaging to see what happens in the brain when we gradually confront our fears to "extinguish" them. "It's essentially new learning. Previously you've learned that something is something that you should be afraid of, and now by being exposed to it and not having adverse consequences, you're learning that there really is nothing to be afraid of in this situation," Phelps explains. As featured in Scientific American Mind, Phelp's colleague Joseph LeDoux, who's spent more than 20 years studying how the brain responds to fear. He discovered that a primitive, almond-shaped brain region called the amygdala reacts instantly to a fear stimulus and gets us ready to fight or flee. © ScienCentral, 2000-2006.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 8452 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new UCLA/Veterans Affairs study implicates defects in the machinery that creates connections between brain cells as responsible for the onset of Alzheimer disease. The defect in PAK enzyme signaling pathways -- vital to creation of these connections, or synapses -- is related to loss of a synapse protein in certain forms of mental retardation, such as Down syndrome. The new finding suggests therapies designed to address the PAK defect could treat cognitive problems in both patient populations. The peer-reviewed journal Nature Neuroscience published the study online Jan. 15. "The emerging lesson is that cognitive problems in Alzheimer disease are related to defects in the machinery controlling neuronal connections, not the lesions observed by pathologists," said principal investigator Greg Cole, professor of medicine and neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine and Alzheimer Disease Research Center at UCLA, and the Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center at the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Health Care System and Sepulveda Ambulatory Care Center. "Our findings show that PAK defects in the brains of Alzheimer patients appear sufficient to directly cause cognitive difficulties." In some families, early-onset Alzheimer disease can be caused by mutations in different genes that all increase the production of a sticky protein called Abeta42 (Ab42). The increase causes the protein to form aggregates, little clusters or long filaments that pile up and make lesions in the brain called plaques.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 8451 - Posted: 01.27.2006

Debora MacKenzie The infectious prions that cause Chronic Wasting Disease, an infection similar to BSE that afflicts North American deer and elk have been found in the parts of the animals that people eat. No one knows if CWD can jump to humans, but if it does hunters in affected areas might be at risk. CWD was first diagnosed as a spongiform encephalopathy in captive deer and elk in Colorado in the 1970s, and in wild deer and elk in the region in the 1980s. But in the 1990s it spread widely within the elk farming industry, jumped to wild deer, and now affects two provinces of Canada and 13 US states. Like the related sheep disease scrapie – though unlike BSE – CWD spreads from animal to animal, says Glenn Telling of the University of Kentucky at Lexington, US. Deer housed with infected animals, or fed infected brain experimentally, contract the disease. Because of this there are fears that the CWD prion might be distributed widely in the deer’s tissues – as scrapie is in sheep. Efforts to find the infectious prion in the muscle of infected animals, by seeing whether antibodies to the prion could find any and bind on, have previously failed. But Telling’s lab has now shown that diseased prions can reside in muscle of deer infected with CWD, by using transgenic mice. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 8450 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Forget learning lines or polishing jokes - having sex may be the best way to prepare for giving a speech. New Scientist magazine reports that Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of Paisley, found having sex can help keep stress at bay. However, only penetrative intercourse did the trick - other forms of sex had no impact on stress levels at all. Professor Brody monitored how various forms of sex affected blood pressure levels in a stressful situation. For a fortnight, 24 women and 22 men kept diaries of how often they engaged in various forms of sex. Then they underwent a stress test involving public speaking and performing mental arithmetic out loud. Volunteers who had had penetrative intercourse were found to be the least stressed, and their blood pressure returned to normal faster than those who had engaged in other forms of sexual activity such as masturbation. Those who abstained from any form of sexual activity at all had the highest blood pressure response to stress. Dr Brody found that the effect remained even after taking differences in personality and other health-related factors into account. He told the BBC News website it was possible the calming effect was linked to the stimulation of a wide variety of nerves which takes place during heterosexual intercourse, but not other forms of sex. In particular, the vagal nerve plays a role in controlling some psychological processes. (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Stress
Link ID: 8449 - Posted: 01.26.2006

By Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer Researchers said yesterday that they have identified a single genetic mutation that accounts for more than 20 percent of all cases of Parkinson's disease in Arabs, North Africans and Jews, a big surprise for a major disease in which genetics was thought to play a relatively minor role. Although the mutation is rare in people with ethnic roots outside the Middle East, its discovery raises the prospect that undiscovered mutations may be major causes of Parkinson's in other groups. "Genetics are going to be a lot more important in Parkinson's than people have appreciated," said study leader Susan Bressman, a neurologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. The finding -- described in a pair of reports in today's New England Journal of Medicine -- could help reveal at last the mysterious underpinnings of Parkinson's, which causes tremors, rigidity and mental decline and is growing more common as the population ages. © 2006 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Parkinsons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 8448 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In experiments with mice, researchers have found that eliminating what appears to be a master genetic switch for the development of pain-sensing neurons knocks out the animals' response to "neuropathic pain." Such pain is abnormal pain that outlasts the injury and is associated with nerve and/or central nervous system changes. The animals rendered deficient in the gene, called Runx1, also showed lack of response to discomfort caused by heat and cold and inflammation. The researchers said that their findings, reported in the February 2, 2006, issue of Neuron, could have implications for the design of improved pain therapies. In their experiments, Qiufu Ma and colleagues studied the Runx1 gene because past research had shown it to code for a protein "transcription factor," which is a master regulator of multiple genes. Runx1 is one of a group of proteins that are key players involved in transmitting external sensory information, like pain and the perception of movement, to the spinal cord. In two other related papers in the same issue, Silvia Arber and colleagues and Tom Jessell and colleagues examine related aspects of the biological importance underlying the Runx transcription factors. Runx1 was known to be expressed only in sensory nerve cells called "nociceptive" cells, involved in sensing pain. Such pain-sensing cells function by translating painful stimuli into nerve signals via specialized pores called "ion channels" in the neurons, as well as specialized receptors. The researchers' studies of Runx1 in these cells revealed that during embryonic development, the gene is characteristically expressed in pain-receptor cells involved in neuropathic pain.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 8447 - Posted: 01.26.2006

Rowan Hooper Human societies rapidly descend into anarchy and chaos without policing. Now, researchers have found that the same thing happens when groups of monkeys are left to their own devices instead of being “policed” by dominant males. It was already well known that in groups of pigtailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina), dominant males keep the rest in order through a form of policing. As they patrol the herd, they frequently receive peaceful “bared teeth” signals from other, subordinate monkeys, acknowledging that the dominant male is in charge. The “police” macaques often intervene to defuse scuffles before they can escalate. To find out what happens when the primate police are missing, Jessica Flack of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, US, and her colleagues temporarily removed three of four dominant males simultaneously from a captive group of 84 pigtailed macaques at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, near Lawrenceville, Georgia, US. While they were gone, group cohesion rapidly began to disintegrate. The researchers saw cliques forming and the breakdown of social networks and contact through communal activities like playing, grooming and sitting together. The amount of violence also escalated, with no one to broker the peace. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 8446 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katherine Unger You're at a party when you hear someone shout, "I'm going to kill you!" If you've just had a pleasant conversation with that person, it's safe to assume he's yelling at someone else. A new study suggests that baboons employ similar reasoning when deciding whether another's threatening grunt is intended for them. This is the first time the ability to intuit another's intentions through vocalizations has been confirmed in nonhumans, say the researchers. Baboons live in social groups of up to 75 individuals and frequently interact using touches, facial expressions, and grunts. The animals have distinctive voices, and a listening baboon can tell who is talking, but scientists didn't know whether a baboon could tell whether it was the one being spoken to. A research team, led by behavioral ecologist Anne Engh of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, sought an answer in a group of 70 baboons living at a game reserve in Botswana. The researchers played a recording of a dominant female's threatening grunt to a lesser-ranking female who had recently either fought or groomed with the dominant female. Subordinate females who had just brawled with their superior looked up toward the speaker faster and were more likely to leave the area than the groomers were, the researchers report online 18 January in Animal Behaviour. © 2006 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 8445 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It is the stuff of nightmares - you are under anaesthetic during an operation but you are fully conscious. Aware of every incision -yet unable to communicate that fact. Now a leading Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Leicester is to reveal his views and findings on awareness in anaesthesia during his inaugural lecture on Tuesday 24 January. Professor Michael Wang, of the School of Psychology at the University of Leicester, will give the lecture, Dissecting Consciousness on the Operating Theatre Table, at 5.30pm in Lecture Theatre 1, Ken Edwards Building. "Psychologists have made, and continue to make, significant contributions to the study and practice of anaesthesia. Moreover the induction of general anaesthesia provides opportunity to investigate the nature of consciousness using experimental methods and systematic observation in the operating theatre." Professor Wang said episodes of full awareness with explicit recall during operations with general anaesthesia are more common than many realise. He added: "The common reason for failure to identify intra-operative awareness is the paralyzing effects of muscle relaxants. Contrary to traditional belief there are no reliable clinical signs to enable the identification of wakefulness."

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 8444 - Posted: 01.25.2006

CHICAGO - A new study from Rush University MedicalCenter helps explain why gait problems are often progressive in old age and related to risk of dementia and death. The study, published in the January issue of the Annals of Neurology, found that neurofibrillary tangles in the substantia nigra, a part of the brain that is subject to cell loss in Parkinson's disease, are associated with gait impairment in older persons with and without dementia. Neurofibrillary tangles are a classic brain abnormality seen in Alzheimer's disease. The more tangle pathology in the substantia nigra, the more impaired the person's gait was before death. "Older persons without Parkinson's disease often exhibit parkinsonian signs, such as difficulty with walking and balance (gait impairment), slowness in movements, rigidity and tremor," said study author Dr. Julie Schneider of the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center. "The mild parkinsonian signs associated with aging have been historically viewed simply as an expected sign of aging rather than a disease process. Previous studies have shown that at least one of these signs, gait impairment, has harmful effects in older persons, and our current study suggests why this may be the case." ©2004 Rush University Medical Center,

Keyword: Alzheimers; Parkinsons
Link ID: 8443 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Two new studies of smokers have yielded new insight into a gene linked to cigarette addiction. The findings could lead to more personalised – and ultimately more effective – treatments that help people to quit smoking. Both groups examined the numerous forms of a gene called CYP2A6, which codes for an enzyme that acts mostly in the liver and regulates nicotine metabolism in the body. Previous research revealed that people with an ineffective form of the gene are less likely to become addicted to smoking. Experts think that nicotine levels remain elevated for longer in these individuals, delaying the craving for the next cigarette. Nicotine is the primary chemical responsible for smoking addiction. People carry different forms of the CYP2A6 gene, and this is more pronounced in particular parts of the world. “It seems that there’s more variation in this gene in Asian populations,” says Sharon Murphy of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, US, who has studied nicotine metabolism. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 8442 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR THE FACTS Americans have long been encouraged to hit the gym or squeeze in a run around the block whenever possible, even at the end of a long workday. But can a late-evening workout ever be too late? As a general rule, most fitness and sleep experts recommend avoiding intense physical activity in the immediate hours before bedtime, arguing that it takes at least three hours for adrenaline and other hormones that typically surge during a workout to return to normal levels. But most studies have not found that to be the case. One study published in the journal Physiology and Behavior in 1998, for example, had a group of college students exercise moderately for about an hour on two separate nights, in one case 90 minutes before bedtime and in the other 30 minutes before bedtime. The activity, the researchers found, had no significant effects on the amount of time the subjects needed to fall asleep. Nor did it affect any other factors indicating how well they slept, including duration of sleep and their number of "waking episodes" during the night. Other studies have had similar findings. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 8441 - Posted: 01.24.2006

By Sally Squires A government committee of health experts yesterday opened the door to selling Orlistat, a prescription weight-loss drug in a reduced dosage directly to consumers. While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still must approve the switch, the agency often follows the advice of its experts. If it does, Orlistat (xenical) -- currently sold only by prescription -- could be available over-the-counter (OTC) later this year. But it's important to know that the weight loss that's typical for users of the drug -- 5 to 10 percent of total weight -- will be less than many dieters expect. And many consumers may be put off by the drug's significant gastrointestinal side effects, including flatulence, diarrhea and anal leakage. Nor is Orlistat a quick fix for unwanted pounds. To achieve any weight loss, users must also eat fewer calories and exercise more. "It's not a miracle drug," notes Lawrence Cheskin, director of the Weight Management Center at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, who conducted a study of Orlistat in adolescents. "None of these [weight loss] medications are." Orlistat was approved as a weight loss and weight maintenance drug by the FDA in 1999 to treat obese and overweight people -- those with a body mass index of 30 or higher -- and overweight people (with BMI of 27 or higher) who already have weight-related health problems including diabetes, heart disease or high blood pressure. © 2006 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 8440 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JAMES GORMAN Now that schadenfreude, which I always thought meant "shades of Freud" but actually means taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune, has been located in the brain, I am awaiting news on the location of ennui, angst, misery, malaise and "feeling pretty." I was actually hoping for anomie as well, but that was when I thought it was something like ennui. Apparently, if we are to believe the several dictionaries I consulted, anomie isn't exactly a state of mind but a kind of disconnected lack of direction or morals. I think my expectations are reasonable. After all, brain scans - which were used in the detection of schadenfreude - have clearly reached the level of sophistication required to identify states of mind described by complicated German words. Soon they will advance to states of mind truly expressible only in French, and ultimately to the kind of internal experience until now captured only in our best musical comedies. Tania Singer at University College London and her colleagues, who published a schadenfreude paper in Nature, were not actually searching for schadenfreude when they used functional magnetic resonance imaging to watch the brains of subjects in action. Their primary interest was variation in levels of empathy, which can be detected by the activity in "pain-related areas" like the "fronto-insular and anterior cingulate cortices" of the brain when a person is watching someone else in pain. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Brain imaging
Link ID: 8439 - Posted: 01.24.2006

By BENEDICT CAREY Liberals and conservatives can become equally bug-eyed and irrational when talking politics, especially when they are on the defensive. Using M.R.I. scanners, neuroscientists have now tracked what happens in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them. The process is almost entirely emotional and unconscious, the researchers report, and there are flares of activity in the brain's pleasure centers when unwelcome information is being rejected. "Everything we know about cognition suggests that, when faced with a contradiction, we use the rational regions of our brain to think about it, but that was not the case here," said Dr. Drew Westen, a psychologist at Emory and lead author of the study, to be presented Saturday at meetings of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Palm Springs, Calif. The results are the latest from brain imaging studies that provide a neural explanation for internal states, like infatuation or ambivalence, and a graphic trace of the brain's activity. Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 8438 - Posted: 01.24.2006

Swedish records stretching back to 1750 have allowed a couple of statisticians to put to the test competing arguments about why fewer male babies are born in times of stress. Previous research into the ratio of male and female infants after events ranging from London's killer smog in the 1950s to the earthquake that rocked Kobe, Japan, in 1995, showed this to be the case. Some scientists argued that a pregnant woman's stress response affects all male fetuses, damaging them for life. Others reasoned that a pregnant woman's stress response merely winnows out those babies unlikely to themselves reproduce during difficult conditions. "It's better to have a female than a male in stressful times," explains statistician Ralph Catalano of the University of California at Berkeley. He argues that weak males are unlikely to survive to reproductive age or, if they do, are unlikely to be able to win mates over more robust males. "If you have a daughter, [her] reproductive success is not contingent on robustness because males are not as picky," he adds. Under stress--whether environmental or psychological--human beings release the hormone cortisol, which helps prepare the body for the proverbial fight or flight. This hormone can cross the placenta into the developing baby. But researchers had failed to hit on a method that could resolve the conflicting theories for why stressed mothers give birth to fewer boys. Catalano and Tim Bruckner of the University of California at Berkeley realized that the two theories made different predictions for the long term viability of male babies. If the cortisol response damages all baby boys equally, then in times of relative ease the average male life expectancy should go up. If, on the other hand, the cortisol response is preventing weak males from being born, then average life expectancy for men should go down in times of relative ease because, overall, more weak men are being born. © 1996-2006 Scientific American, Inc

Keyword: Stress; Evolution
Link ID: 8437 - Posted: 06.24.2010