By Caroline Ryan BBC News website health reporter The man who received the first cornea transplant was given no antibiotics, no drugs to stop him rejecting the tissue - and had to endure his eyelids being sewn shut for 10 days before he knew if the procedure had worked. But this was 100 years ago. That first, groundbreaking, operation took place in Olomouc, now in the east of the Czech Republic. It was carried out by Dr Eduard Zirm, an ophthalmic specialist who had been trying to achieve a successful transplant for some time. The recipient was Alois Gloger, a labourer who had been blinded in an accident while working with lime. The corneas came from an 11-year-old boy who had been blinded by deep injuries to his eyes. A few hours after the operation, the 43-year-old patient could see again. He retained his eyesight for the rest of his life and was back working on his farm within three months. Dr Zirm, in common with other specialists across the world, had long been trying to achieve a successful cornea transplant. He transplanted corneas into both the patient's eyes. To get around the lack of fine material to sew the cornea to the eye, he used strips of the conjunctiva - the lining of the white of the eye - prising up one end of a strip and using it to "tape down" the new cornea. To cut out the cornea for transplant, he used a trephine, a circular surgical instrument with a cutting edge, powered by clockwork. He then sewed the patient's eyelids shut for 10 days to allow time for the cornea and the conjunctiva strips to "knit" together. When he unstitched the eyelids, the graft in the patient's left eye had taken - although the other had failed. (C)BBC

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 8275 - Posted: 12.07.2005

Babies born with a larger head may have an increased risk of childhood brain cancer, research suggests. Head circumference at birth reflects brain size, and researchers suspected that in some cases this might be a sign of abnormal growth patterns. A Norwegian Institute of Public Health team tested their hypothesis by examining the health records of over a million young people. They found the larger the head at birth, the greater the risk. For every centimetre increase in head circumference at birth, the relative risk of having a tumour rose by 27%. However, the overall risk was still small. Out of 1,010,366 children in the study just 453 were diagnosed with brain cancer. In the UK, about 300 children are diagnosed with a brain tumour each year. Currently, around 30% of affected children die of the disease. The researchers said their work suggested that brain cancers might begin to develop before birth. Cancer cells - and particularly those that play a key role in developing blood supply to a tumour - are thought to be stimulated by the same growth factors as healthy tissues during development. Thus if healthy tissues grow at a faster rate than usual, then maybe growth factors are present at levels that make the development of malignant tissues more likely too. Another hypothesis is that large children may be more prone to cancer simply because they have more cells. (C)BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 8274 - Posted: 12.07.2005

By Caroline E. Mayer, Washington Post Staff Writer Food and beverage companies are using television ads to entice children into eating massive amounts of unhealthful food, leading to a sharp increase in childhood obesity and diabetes, a national science advisory panel said yesterday. The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies, called on food and beverage manufacturers and restaurants to make more healthful products and shift their advertising emphasis to promote them. If the companies do not do so within two years, Congress should mandate changes, especially for broadcast and cable television ads, the institute said. "There is strong evidence that exposure to television advertising is associated with" obesity, the government-chartered institute said in a congressionally requested report to determine the effects of food advertising on children's health. The report said most of the food and beverage products promoted to children are high in calories, sugar, salt and fat and low in nutrients. Many are promoted with popular cartoon characters. There are, for example, SpongeBob SquarePants cereal, Pop-Tarts, cookies and candy and Scooby-Doo fruit snacks and crackers. The institute said such characters should be used to promote only products that support healthful diets. © 2005 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Obesity; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 8273 - Posted: 06.24.2010

— When Sonia Ruschak's 5-month-old daughter, Violet, wasn't napping much, she started to feel stressed. Then the problem got worse — her daughter became even crankier and slept less. After a while, Ruschak decided to stop worrying — and suddenly things got better. "I definitely think she relaxed more and cried less when I stopped stressing," she said. While parents have long felt their children read and react to their emotional states, scientists have only recently begun quantifying that connection and considering its importance in a child's development. Their research shows that the connection between an infant and a primary caregiver is so key that there can be drawbacks to placing the child in day care very early in life. Later on, however, there may be benefits to some separation. Allan Schore, a leading neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles' Center for Culture, Brain, and Development, points out that the parent-child connection during a child's first year can not only affect a child's psychological state, it actually plays a role in physically shaping the brain. Meanwhile, a study from the University of Bath, in England, has shown that placing 3- to 5-year-olds in day care can benefit the psychological well-being of both parent and child. "The research is now moving out of theoretical science and into practical science to the point where we can begin advising pediatricians about what advice to offer parents," Schore said. © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 8272 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Male water fleas that scientists have never seen have made their debut in a University at Buffalo laboratory, providing biologists with their first glimpse of these elusive organisms. The UB research, published last month in Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, opens a new window on the biological diversity of several species of water fleas, including those in the genus Daphnia and the genus Bosmina, that play major roles in freshwater food webs. It also demonstrates that pesticides that mimic the hormone used in the UB experiments may have much broader effects than initially believed, and could damage populations of fish and other organisms higher up in the food chain. "Most freshwater fish eat water fleas at some point in their lives," said Derek J. Taylor, Ph.D., associate professor of biological sciences in UB's College of Arts and Sciences and co-author on the paper. "They are an important food source for fish." Water fleas are nearly microscopic organisms with transparent bodies. Found in lakes, ponds and other bodies of fresh water, they are crustaceans like lobsters and not insects, as their name suggests. © 2005 University at Buffalo.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 8271 - Posted: 06.24.2010

University of Florida researchers have identified one possible reason for rising obesity rates, and it all starts with fructose, found in fruit, honey, table sugar and other sweeteners, and in many processed foods. Fructose may trick you into thinking you are hungrier than you should be, say the scientists, whose studies in animals have revealed its role in a biochemical chain reaction that triggers weight gain and other features of metabolic syndrome - the main precursor to type 2 diabetes. In related research, they also prevented rats from packing on the pounds by interrupting the way their bodies processed this simple sugar, even when the animals continued to consume it. The findings, reported in the December issue of Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology and in this month's online edition of the American Journal of Physiology-Renal Physiology, add to growing evidence implicating fructose in the obesity epidemic and could influence future dietary guidelines. UF researchers are now studying whether the same mechanism is involved in people. "There may be more than just the common concept that the reason a person gets fat is because they eat too many calories and they don't do enough exercise," said Richard J. Johnson, M.D., the J. Robert Cade professor of nephrology and chief of nephrology, hypertension and transplantation at UF's College of Medicine.

Keyword: Obesity; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 8270 - Posted: 12.07.2005

By Mary Beckman Seniors don't need to do everything the health magazines recommend to stay fit. A new study with older women shows that either snoozing right or maintaining a good social network is enough to reduce levels of an inflammatory compound linked to bad health. It's well known that lifestyle characteristics such as sleep and relationships can affect health. For example, seniors who sleep badly or have few close friends and relations generally have more health problems and die younger than their peers. But what's behind the trend? Previous research indicates than an inflammatory molecule in the body called IL-6 is present at high levels in people who sleep badly. Just as high cholesterol puts one at risk for heart disease, high IL-6 increases the risk of a variety of ailments associated with age, such as heart disease, Alzheimer's, and arthritis. To see whether a good night's sleep and strong social networks decreased IL-6 levels in senior women, psychologist Elliot Friedman at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and colleagues surveyed 135 women between the ages of 61 and 90 about how well they slept and how good they felt about their relationships with other people. © 2005 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sleep; Stress
Link ID: 8269 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tracy Staedter, Discovery News —A mobile robot that uses a set of whiskers to discriminate between different textures could open the door on new sensing technologies that are more sensitive than touch and lead to better mobile devices able to move efficiently though tight, dark places where vision is useless. "It's like walking through a dark room and having your hands stretched out so that you won't bump into something ," said neurobiologist Miriam Fend, whose research is part of the AMouse project at the University of Zurich. Fend's robot is about eight centimeters in diameter and is equipped with two arrays of real rat whiskers that twitch side to side. Each whisker is glued to a membrane covering a microphone. When the whiskers sweep across an object, the membrane deforms, producing a signal that is amplified and then recorded by a computer. In experiments, the mouse robot explored a walled environment, feeling around for obstacles. When it came into contact with a surface, it stopped, whisked the surface and logged the data into its computer brain and, when necessary, repositioned itself slightly to get a better reading. © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 8268 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers believe they have identified a molecule that could be targeted to treat mental impairment in people with Down's syndrome. A team at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London found people with Down's syndrome have higher levels of myo-inositol in their brains. They also found increased levels of this molecule are associated with reduced intellectual ability. The study is published in Archives of General Psychiatry. The researchers also suspect that high levels of myo-inositol could play a role in predisposing people with Down syndrome to early-onset Alzheimer's disease. The molecule is known to promote the formation of amyloid plaques - a hallmark of Alzheimer's. Once they reach the age of 40, almost all people with Down's syndrome show the brain characteristics of Alzheimer's disease - though they do not all go on to develop dementia. The combination of pre-existing mental retardation with an increasing overlying dementia is difficult to treat, and expensive to manage. Lead researcher Professor Declan Murphy said: "We have shown in this study that adults with Down's syndrome have a significantly higher concentration of myo-inositol in the hippocampal region of their brains, and this increase is associated with a reduced cognitive ability. We are now carrying out more studies to see if we can reduce the concentration of myo-inositol in the brains of people with Down's. We hope that if we can do this, it will be a new way of treating this devastating disorder." (C)BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 8267 - Posted: 12.06.2005

Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News Today's cutting-edge optical technologies could progress by leaps and bounds if scientists can better imitate animal-eye evolution spanning billions of years, two bioengineers report. Using biology as inspiration, scientists hope to make advances in optics that would enhance camera and video technology, surveillance systems, missile defense, remote navigation, and even human vision aids. "It's amazing to see the beauty of nature and see if we can apply this to everyday life," said Luke Lee, a bioengineer at the University of California, Berkeley. Lee and Berkeley colleague Robert Szema wrote on the state of animal-eye optics research in a recent issue of the journal Science. In his lab, Lee is refining three-dimensional polymer structures that can mimic the components of an eye, from lenses to light receptors. He believes soft, flexible polymers may be the key to replicating natural sight systems that outperform their mechanized competition. © 1996-2005 National Geographic Society

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 8266 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), one of the National Institutes of Health, are a step closer to unraveling the mystery of taste. In a study published in the December 2, 2005, issue of Science, researchers have pinpointed the chemical responsible for transmitting signals from the taste buds — small sensory bumps on the tongue, throat, and roof of the mouth — to the taste nerves leading to the brain. Today’s findings provide scientists with a more complete picture of this complicated process, helping advance the study of taste and taste disorders. “People with taste disorders might not be able to enjoy the fun of eating and are at risk for other health problems, such as poorly balanced nutrition, so researchers are working to understand more fully how our sense of taste works,” says James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the NIDCD. “Until now, there has always been a missing link between the detection of chemicals in the taste buds and the transmission of chemical signals from the taste nerves to the brain. Through an ingenious use of genetic engineering, these researchers have finally been able to solve the puzzle.” Using “knockout mice,” mice that are genetically altered to be missing one or more key genes, the researchers were able to narrow the field of possible chemicals to one: adenosine 5’-triphosphate, or ATP, a high-energy molecule that is also important for helping cells in the body to function. The scientists produced mice that are missing the genes that encode two key receptors found in taste nerves — P2X2 and P2X3 — both of which bind to ATP.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 8265 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Tom Simonite The most common form of colour blindness makes it difficult for those with the condition to distinguish between red and green. But scientists have found that it also helps these people to discern subtle shades of khaki that look identical to those with normal vision. About six percent of men, and a much smaller fraction of women, have deuteranomaly, commonly known as red-green colour blindness. It is caused by a genetic mutation that affects one of the three pigments found in the cone-shaped cells in the retina that respond to different colours of light. This mutation alters the pigment that responds to green light so that it behaves more like the red-sensitive pigment. Therefore, the two colours produce almost identical responses in the eye. This means that people with deuteranomaly often cannot see differences between shades of red and green on test cards used by scientists to investigate the disorder. Now researchers based at the University of Cambridge, UK, and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, have turned the tables. They designed test cards that deliberately favoured people with deuteranomaly to show that these individuals can spot differences between shades of khaki that look identical to those with normal vision. Their work is published in the journal Current Biology1. © 2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 8264 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DAVID WILLIAMSON UNC News Services CHAPEL HILL – By age 2, children with the often-devastating neurological condition physicians call autism show a generalized enlargement of their brains, a new University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University medical schools study concludes. Exactly why this roughly 5 percent greater brain growth occurs and what it means are not yet clear, scientists said. Indirect evidence suggested that the increased brain growth probably began during the later months of the children’s first year of life. A report on the finding appears in the December issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. UNC authors are Dr. Heather Cody Hazlett, assistant professor of psychiatry; Dr. Michele Poe, a statistician with the FPG Child Development Institute; Dr. Guido Gerig, professor of computer science; imaging technician Rachel Gimpel Smith; and Drs. John Gilmore and Joseph Piven, professors of psychiatry. At UNC, Piven, the senior author, directs both its Study to Advance Autism Research and Treatment (STAART) Center and its Neurodevelopmental Disorders Research Center. Duke authors are Drs. James Provenzale and Allison Ross, professor of radiology and associate professor of anesthesiology, respectively.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 8263 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The stress a married couple experiences during a 30-minute argument can delay their bodies’ ability to heal a wound by at least a day, according to a new study. And if the couples’ relationship endures routine hostility, the delay can be even longer. There could be important implications for people suffering from chronic wounds, such as skin ulcers. “We knew that chronic stress causes reduced immunity, but to find that an argument of just half an hour has such a profound effect on wound healing is quite shocking,” says Patricia Price at the Wound Healing Research Unit at Cardiff University, Wales, who was not involved in the study. Researchers at Ohio State University College of Medicine in the US inflicted small wounds on 42 otherwise healthy married couples, whose ages ranged from 22 to 77. Each partner was wounded on the forearm with a punch biopsy device, which scrapes off eight patches of the skin's surface, each 8 millimetres in diameter, to leave small open sores. Before a blister could form, another device was used to create a protective bubble over each wound from which the researchers could extract the fluids that normally fill such blisters. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Neuroimmunology; Stress
Link ID: 8262 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A dietary supplement taken during pregnancy could cut the risk of hydrocephalus, research suggests. The condition, known as water on the brain, is often deadly, and survivors can have impaired brain development. It was thought this was due to damage caused by fluid accumulation, but work by Manchester and Lancaster Universities challenges this theory. They believe the key to understanding the condition could be changes to the chemical composition of this fluid. The UK researchers hope their work will eventually lead not only to a reduced risk of hydrocephalus, but also new treatments for those who survive with the condition. Parents of children suffering from the condition in the US have raised money to pay for the next stage of the investigation. The money will fund a lab at the University of Central Florida, which will be staffed by the UK teams. There is currently no unequivocal prenatal diagnosis test or satisfactory treatment for hydrocephalus other than surgical diversion of the fluid through a tube, known as a shunt, from the brain to the abdomen or heart. However, shunts are permanent and prone to infection and blockage, which means patients may require several operations during their lifetime. Lead researcher Dr Jaleel Miyan said: "This procedure is based on the established clinical view that this fluid is nothing more than a mechanical support system within the skull with little, if any, physiological properties and that hydrocephalus is simply a build-up of excess cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. (C)BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 8261 - Posted: 12.05.2005

Abnormal activity in neurons that help individuals imitate others may underlie some of the social deficits found in autism, US researchers believe. A Nature Neuroscience study found autistic children had less brain activation in an area involved in understanding others' state of mind. The degree of activation of the 'mirror neurons' housed in this area correlated with measures of social impairment. The lower the activation, the stronger the impairment the children had. Autism affects a person's ability to communicate with others and to respond appropriately to environmental cues. In animals, mirror neurons have been shown to fire both when the animal observes another performing an act and when they perform the same act themselves. Dr Mirella Dapretto and colleagues studied the brain activity patterns of 10 children with autism as the children either imitated facial gestures or passively watched facial gestures. The facial gestures reflected emotions including fear, anger, sadness and happiness. The researchers compared these outcomes with those of 10 children of the same age and IQ but who did not have autism. Although the autistic children were able to perform the task, they had lower activation in a brain area containing mirror neurons - the inferior frontal gyrus pars opercularis - both when watching and imitating facial gestures, compared to the other children. (C)BBC

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 8260 - Posted: 12.05.2005

By PAUL RAEBURN In the mid-1980's, David Shaffer, a psychiatrist, became disturbed by an increase in teenage suicides. After declining for decades, the rate started climbing in the late 1950's, especially for boys. By the 1980's, it had tripled - to 11.3 per 100,000 teenagers 15 to 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In more recent surveys of teenagers, the C.D.C. has found that about 8 percent of high-school students answer yes when asked if they had attempted suicide during the past year. About 1,500 succeed annually, making suicide the third-leading cause of death in teenagers after accidents and homicides. Shaffer wanted to know what was happening - and whether anything could be done about it. There were plenty of theories. Defenders of family values blamed working mothers and divorce. Some churches blamed the game Dungeons & Dragons, for its supposed demonic content. One therapist argued that most suicides were committed by gay teenage victims of discrimination. And then there was the music that kids were listening to. "A whole lot of people were criticizing rock stars," Shaffer says. When Shaffer began his research, most people thought suicide was a random act - that little could be done to predict or prevent it. But Shaffer, now chief of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University, didn't believe that. He studied records of 140 teenagers who committed suicide during the 1980's in and around New York City. Most exhibited at least one of three characteristics. The first was depression. The second was alcohol abuse - found in two-thirds of the 18-year-olds. And the third was aggression - beating somebody up or punching walls. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 8259 - Posted: 12.05.2005

New imaging research at UCLA detailed Dec. 4 as an advance online publication of the journal Nature Neuroscience shows children with autism have virtually no activity in a key part of the brain's mirror neuron system while imitating and observing emotions. Mirror neurons fire when a person performs a goal-directed action and while he or she observes the same action performed by others. Neuroscientists believe this observation-execution matching system provides a neural mechanism by which others' actions, intentions and emotions can be understood automatically. Symptoms of autism include difficulties with social interaction -- including verbal and nonverbal communication -- imitation and empathy. The new findings dramatically bolster a growing body of evidence pointing to a breakdown of the brain's mirror neuron system as the mechanism behind these autism symptoms. "Our findings suggest that a dysfunctional mirror neuron system may underlie the social deficits observed in autism," said Mirella Dapretto, lead author and assistant professor in residence of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Together with other recent data, our results provide strong support for a mirror neuron theory of autism. This is exciting because we finally have an account that can explain all core symptoms of this disorder."

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 8258 - Posted: 12.05.2005

Completing a daily crossword and enjoying a range of activities and interests has long been accepted as a recipe for maintaining a healthy brain in older age, but the reasons for this have never been clear. Now, scientists at the University of Edinburgh are seeking to identify brain's 'survival' genes which lie dormant in unused brain cells, but are re-awakened in active brain cells. These awakened genes make the brain cells live longer and resist traumas such as disease, stroke and the effects of drugs, and are also critical to brain development in unborn babies. Their findings could lead to the development of smarter drugs or gene therapies to halt the progress of neurological diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and may also explain, scientifically, the benefits to the brain of maintaining an intellectually and physically stimulating lifestyle in later years. Dr Giles Hardingham of the Centre for Neuroscience Research at the University of Edinburgh said: "When brain cells are highly stimulated, many unused genes are suddenly reactivated. We have found that a group of these genes can make the active brain cells far healthier than lazy, inactive cells, and more likely to live a long life. These findings also have implications at the other end of life, where maternal drug taking and drinking can cause these survival genes to be turned off in the brain of unborn babies."

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 8257 - Posted: 12.05.2005

The secret to everlasting love may lie in a specific region of the brain activated by the brain chemical dopamine, say researchers studying prairie voles. The rodents usually form lifelong monogamous pair-bonds with their mating partners, but the researchers found that by manipulating certain dopamine receptors in specific regions of their brains, they could disrupt these relationships and even cause them to become unfaithful. Brandon Aragona at Florida State University in Tallahassee, US, and colleagues examined the “love affair” that develops between prairies voles. After mating once, the male prairie vole not only prefers the company of his mate, but will act aggressively towards other available females. His female partner displays a similar commitment, showing hostility towards other interested male voles. The researchers found that, after a single mating encounter, large amounts of the neurotransmitter dopamine are released into the nucleus accumbens, a sub-cortical region of the brain that is also involved in motivated behaviour and the development of addiction. “Dopamine release is associated with a reorganisation of brain circuitry that changes this region of the brain, promoting pair-bonding,” Aragona explains. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 8256 - Posted: 06.24.2010