Drug discovery researchers at Northwestern University have developed a novel orally administered compound specifically targeted to suppress brain cell inflammation and neuron loss associated with Alzheimer's disease. The compound is also rapidly absorbed by the brain and is non-toxic – important considerations for a central nervous system drug that might need to be taken for extended periods. As described in the Jan. 11 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, the compound, called MW01-5-188WH, selectively inhibits production of pro-inflammatory proteins called cytokines by glia, important cells of the central nervous system that normally help the body mount a response, but are overactivated in certain neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, stroke and traumatic brain injury. The compound was designed and synthesized in the laboratory of D. Martin Watterson at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, using a synthetic chemistry platform developed in his lab by researchers at the Northwestern University Center for Drug Discovery and Chemical Biology (CDDCB) for the rapid discovery of new potential therapeutic compounds.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 8424 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Sybil A trawl through the journal Addiction this week comes up with this startling find: a hangover makes you feel out of sorts, and affects your cognitive performance. Well, quite. I might be fairly wet behind the ears as a columnist, but I know the effect that getting sloshed the night before can have. Did someone really need to prove this? According to lead researcher Frances Finnigan of Glasgow Caledonian University, UK, we apparently lacked hard scientific facts to back up this subjective experience. "Ok, it's common sense," she tells me on the phone, "but there have not been studies, only anecdotal evidence." Let's be clear. People have tried to quantify the effects of hangovers in the lab, and work out what properties of a night out are most likely to create nasty feelings in the morning. People have tested hangover cures. And alcohol itself has been studied ad nauseam. Literally. But Finnigan says there is a dearth of studies done with 'real' hangovers. ©2006 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 8423 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The largest study so far has found no evidence of a link between cellphone use and brain tumours. UK researchers interviewed 966 people from across Britain diagnosed with brain tumours, as well as 1716 apparently healthy controls between December 2000 and February 2004. The epidemiological survey found no evidence that using a cellphone increased the risk of developing a tumour or that prolonged usage increased risk either. The study did find an association between the location of a tumour and side of the head that patients said they most often used to make calls. But when the team considered handedness – which correlates to the side of the head to which cellphones are most commonly held – there was no link. In light of the overall study results the researchers believe the association was an anomaly – they suggest these patients most probably misremembered their cellphone usage, in an effort to explain the tumour. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 8422 - Posted: 06.24.2010

PHILADELPHIA -- We might not be able to resist a pretty face after all, according to a report from the University of Pennsylvania. Experiments in which subjects were given a fraction of a second to judge "attractiveness" offered further evidence that our preference for beauty might be hard-wired. People who participated in the studies were also more likely to associate pretty faces with positive traits. "We're able to judge attractiveness with surprising speed and on the basis of very little information," said Ingrid Olson, a professor in Penn's Department of Psychology and researcher at Penn's Center for Cognitive Neurosciece. "It seems that pretty faces 'prime' our minds to make us more likely to associate the pretty face with a positive emotion." Olson, along with co-author Christy Marshuetz, of Yale University recently published their findings in the journal Emotion, a publication of the American Psychological Association. The researchers set out to study cognitive processes behind a very real phenomenon: physically attractive people have advantages that unattractive people do not. Copyright © 2005, University of Pennsylvania

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 8421 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Sights and sounds fill the world, presenting a panoply of possible foci for the brain. Yet most animals can hone in on whatever sight most demands interest. Then the sounds associated with that sight--be it a loved one talking or a tasty meal skittering through the undergrowth--become all the clearer. This is attention and new research shows how an owl's brain establishes the state. It also provides tantalizing evidence that brains from across the animal kingdom work the same way. Neurologists Daniel Winkowski and Eric Knudsen of Stanford University wired 12 owls with electrodes in the areas of their brains that process either visual or auditory input. Each region literally maps the world of sound or sight, determining whether it comes from up or down, left or right. Sending a small electrical charge into the owl's visual brain region--the so-called arcopallial gaze fields--caused it to move its head and eyes in a particular direction. When a simultaneous audio stimulus matched that direction, the owl's brain responded more strongly to that noise. It also blocked out competing noises from other directions. Owls are already extremely gifted at tuning in a particular sound, the authors note in their paper published in the current issue of Nature, but pairing a sound with a sight enhanced that ability even further. "The ability to hear and the direction of gaze aren't necessarily linked," Winkowski says. But "the circuits in the brain that control gaze direction affect how the brain processes auditory information." © 1996-2006 Scientific American, Inc

Keyword: ADHD; Hearing
Link ID: 8420 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Maybe you wanted to quit smoking. Or you vowed to get off the couch and cut back on your fast food intake. Whatever your New Year's resolution was, you're not alone if it's already broken. Take Paige Barr. The New York City actress says she carries her list of resolutions around with her "so I can know exactly how bad I'm doing." But maybe you shouldn't be too hard on yourself: Neuroscientists say you can pin part of the blame on your brain. Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist Ann Graybiel's research is beginning to explain why many of us fall back into bad habits, even after years of being good. "We all hear stories of smokers who try so hard to quit smoking cigarettes and they finally quit," she says. " They haven't smoked in years, and then one day, they're in that very situation where they used to smoke, and a flood of who knows what, memory or something, triggers off the pattern and all of a sudden the habit is back." Learning to perform a task to the point that it becomes second nature can take time, but "We all know intuitively that once we do things repetitively and get a habit, we can reel them off without thinking about it," says Graybiel. "If we learn something by chance or trial and error… that starts what scientists call the 'exploit' phase of things. You start doing the same thing again and again because it pays off." © ScienCentral, 2000-2006.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 8419 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Elizabeth Pennisi Whether a heart, a toe, or a nose, evolutionary biologists are keen to know where our body parts came from. Now they're getting a better idea of how our ears formed thanks to a 370-million-year-old fish, whose jawbone was beginning to resemble a bone found in our middle ear. Before we used the middle ear to amplify and transmit sound, fish used its components to breathe. Over time, a tube called a spiracle, which connects the gills to the water outside, evolved into a chamber behind the eardrum. And a bony strut that connects a fish's jaw hinge to the brain case became one of three tiny bones in this chamber. The early stages of this transition have now been studied by Martin Brazeau, a graduate student in evolutionary biology at Uppsala University, Sweden, and his advisor, paleontologist Per Ahlberg. The researchers analyzed a skull of Panderichthys--an ancient fish that evolved at about the same time as tetrapods (early four-legged land-dwellers) from a common ancestor. The team compared the fish's bones and head structure to fossils of a more primitive fish and an early tetrapod. © 2006 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Hearing; Evolution
Link ID: 8418 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new study in mice suggests that Alzheimer's disease (AD) may be triggered when adult neurons try to divide. The finding helps researchers understand what goes wrong in the disease and may lead to new ways of treating it. The study was funded in part by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health, and appears in the January 18, 2006 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.[1] For unknown reasons, nerve cells (neurons) affected by AD and many other neurodegenerative diseases often start to divide before they die. The new study shows that, in animal models of AD, this abnormal cell division starts long before amyloid plaques or other other markers of the disease appear. Cell division occurs through a process called the cell cycle. “If you could stop cell cycling, you might be able to stop neurons from dying prematurely. This could be a fresh approach to therapy for Alzheimer's and other diseases, including stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis [also known as Lou Gehrig's disease], and HIV dementia,” says Karl Herrup, Ph.D., of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who led the study. The researchers compared the brains of three different mouse models of AD to brains from normal mice, looking specifically for markers of cell cycling. They found that, in the AD mouse models, cell cycle-related proteins appeared in neurons 6 months before the first amyloid plaques or disease-related immune reactions developed in the brain. Many of the neurons also had increased numbers of chromosomes, which is typical of cells that have begun to divide. These changes were not seen in normal mice.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 8417 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY There's no question that the amount of lead in children's blood has dropped significantly in recent decades, much to the benefit of their brains and bodies. There's also no question that children who are still being permanently damaged by excessive lead levels live mainly at the poverty level or near it, in neighborhoods where they can be poisoned by lead from contaminated paint, water, soil and dust. More Personal Health Columns However, no one at any level of society, not even those with seven-figure incomes, can afford to be complacent about the exposure of children to lead in home and play environments. Here are some disturbing facts important to everyone concerned about the damage lead can cause and its individual and societal costs. About a quarter of the nation's children are exposed to lead at home, and more than 400,000 children are found each year to harbor amounts of lead deemed hazardous to normal mental and physical development. Environmental exposure to lead in early childhood is a prelude to a host of societal ills. It is associated with an increased risk of reading problems, school failure, delinquency and criminal behavior. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 8416 - Posted: 01.19.2006

By IAN FISHER and CORNELIA DEAN ROME, - The official Vatican newspaper published an article this week labeling as "correct" the recent decision by a judge in Pennsylvania that intelligent design should not be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution. "If the model proposed by Darwin is not considered sufficient, one should search for another," Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, wrote in the Jan. 16-17 edition of the paper, L'Osservatore Romano. "But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science," he wrote, calling intelligent design unscientific. "It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious." The article was not presented as an official church position. But in the subtle and purposely ambiguous world of the Vatican, the comments seemed notable, given their strength on a delicate question much debated under the new pope, Benedict XVI. Advocates for teaching evolution hailed the article. "He is emphasizing that there is no need to see a contradiction between Catholic teachings and evolution," said Dr. Francisco J. Ayala, professor of biology at the University of California, Irvine, and a former Dominican priest. "Good for him." Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 8415 - Posted: 01.19.2006

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL ROME, - In "Don Juan" Lord Byron wrote, "Sweet is revenge - especially to women." But a study released Wednesday, bolstered by magnetic resonance imaging, suggests that men may be the more natural avengers. In the study, when male subjects witnessed people they perceived as bad guys being zapped by a mild electrical shock, their M.R.I. scans lit up in primitive brain areas associated with reward. Their brains' empathy centers remained dull. Women watching the punishment, in contrast, showed no response in centers associated with pleasure. Even though they also said they did not like the bad guys, their empathy centers still quietly glowed. The study seems to show for the first time in physical terms what many people probably assume they already know: that women are generally more empathetic than men, and that men take great pleasure in seeing revenge exacted. Men "expressed more desire for revenge and seemed to feel satisfaction when unfair people were given what they perceived as deserved physical punishment," said Dr. Tania Singer, the lead researcher, of the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience at University College London. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 8414 - Posted: 01.19.2006

Antipsychotic drugs can limit the behavioural abnormalities associated with a parasitic infection called toxoplasmosis in some rats – the condition causes them to become “suicidally” attracted to cats. The findings provide insight into a possible cause of schizophrenia, say the researchers behind the new study. The results also hint that anti-psychotic medications such as haloperidol – used to control the symptoms of schizophrenia – could serve as much-needed treatments against the dormant stage of toxoplasmosis in humans, says Joanne Webster of Imperial College London, UK, and one of the study team. She adds, however, that “it’s still very much a black box as to how these drugs work” to fight the parasitic infection. A latent toxoplasmosis infection might produce schizophrenia in humans, according to a theory by Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical Research Institute in Maryland, US, and a co-author on the study. But other experts stress the possibility that genes or even marijuana abuse may predispose a person to this type of disorder. The idea that toxoplasmosis triggers schizophrenia remains “on the fringes”, according to Paul Corry, a spokesperson for the mental illness charity Rethink in London, UK. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 8413 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By KATE ZERNIKE A sharp increase in the number of people arriving in emergency rooms with methamphetamine-related problems is straining local hospital budgets and treatment facilities across the country, particularly in the Midwest, according to two surveys to be released in Washington today. The studies, conducted late last year by the National Association of Counties, are another indicator of the toll the drug has taken on local communities, particularly in rural areas where social service networks are ill-equipped to deal with the consequences. In July, the association reported that an overwhelming number of sheriffs polled nationwide declared methamphetamine their No. 1 law enforcement problem. In the most recent survey, conducted late last year, 73 percent of the 200 county and regional hospitals polled said they had seen an increase in the number of people visiting emergency rooms for methamphetamine-related problems over the last five years; 68 percent reported a continued increase in the last three years, and 45 percent in the last year. The problem was particularly intense in the middle of the country: 70 percent of hospitals in the Midwest and 80 percent in the Upper Midwest said methamphetamine accounted for 10 percent of their patients. Nationwide, 14 percent of the hospitals said such cases made up 20 percent of their emergency room visits. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 8412 - Posted: 01.18.2006

Female rats appear to be affected more than males by stress early in life, leading to a higher likelihood of cocaine addiction and eating disorders as adults, according to a study by Yale School of Medicine researchers in Neuropsychopharmacology. "These results differ somewhat from our previous study conducted with male rats," said Therese Kosten, research scientist, Department of Psychiatry, and lead author of the study. "Early life stress produces a greater increase in cocaine self-administration in female versus male rats." In addition, the neonatal stress enhances responding for food treats in female, but not male, rats, she said. "We believe this may suggest that women with early life stress have an enhanced risk of developing drug addiction, as well as eating disorders," Kosten said. Of the rats in the research, some were isolated from their mothers as "infants." The rats were studied as adults who had learned to self-administer cocaine and food treats. The researchers found the rats that had been kept in isolation worked harder to obtain food and drug rewards. © 2003-2006 Medical News Today

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Stress
Link ID: 8411 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Lacking a sense of humor might not just be bad for your social life, it might also be harming your cardiovascular health. A new study shows that laughter actually increases blood flow in the body, proving the old adage laughter is the best medicine right, at least when it comes to the heart. Cardiologist Michael Miller and colleagues at the University of Maryland tested blood flow in 20 healthy men and women after they watched 15 to 30 minute clips of funny movies--Kingpin and There's Something About Mary--and a stressful film--the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan. The researchers measured blood flow both before each viewing began and one minute after it ended. "We wanted to see whether laughter induced a vascular response," Miller explains. Prior research inspired the team to conduct the experiment. A series of questionnaires administered to sufferers of coronary heart disease by the cardiologists revealed that patients who suffered a heart attack failed to find the humor in a situation like wearing the same outfit to a party 40 percent more often than their healthy counterparts. "We didn't know whether that was cause and effect or just part and parcel of having the disease," Miller says. © 1996-2006 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 8410 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DALLAS - - By deleting a single gene in a small portion of the brains of mice, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center found that the animals were affected in a way resembling schizophrenia in humans. After the gene was removed, the animals, which had been trained to use external cues to look for chocolate treats buried in sand, couldn't learn a similar task, the researchers report in a paper appearing in today's issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The researchers deleted the gene, which codes for a part of a protein involved in passing signals between nerve cells needed for learning and memory. When a similar protein is blocked by drugs in humans, it leads to a psychotic state similar to schizophrenia. "We think that both our genetic rodent model as well as a new learning and memory test we developed may provide valuable tools in the investigation of schizophrenia," said Dr. Robert Greene, professor of psychiatry and senior author of the study. Copyright 2006. The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 8409 - Posted: 01.18.2006

Nerve cells store and transmit information via special contact sites called synapses. Synapses also play a role in determining what we remember and what we forget. When we learn, both the structure and the functional characteristics of these contact sites change. Scientists are only now beginning to understand the molecular processes which cause that change. Researchers led by Michael Kiebler at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen (now at the Center for Brain Research, University of Vienna) have identified a protein that is essential for the maintenance of synapses: if the protein Staufen2 is removed in a nerve cell, the cell loses a large portion of its synapses. Moreover, signalling at the remaining contact sites is significantly impaired. Staufen proteins are involved in the transport of molecular blueprints (mRNAs) to specific locations in a cell. The disturbance in the structure and function of synapses without Staufen2 protein suggests that mRNA transport to synapses is crucial to their maintenance and the storage of memory (Journal of Cell Biology, January 17, 2006). Nerve cells receive signals from other nerve cells via dendrites, which branch out like the branches of a tree. The cell-body receives incoming information, and transmits it further through the axon, a long projection from the cell. Nerve cells make contact with each other at highly-specialised locations known as synapses. There, information is not only passively transmitted. Synapses can, depending on input, change and in this way store new memory.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 8408 - Posted: 01.18.2006

KINGSTON, Ont. - Anticipating our own touch - for example in tickling oneself - reduces its impact, says Queen's psychologist Dr. Randy Flanagan, a member of the university's Centre for Neuroscience Studies. This is evidence of an important human adaptation that helps us interact with objects in our environment. An expert in eye/hand movement, Dr. Flanagan is part of an international team exploring sensory attenuation - the way that we filter out or "cancel" unnecessary information from the world around us. Their study appears on-line today in the international journal Public Library of Science (PloS) - Biology. Led by Paul Bays of University College London, the team also includes Daniel Wolpert of Cambridge University. "It's well-known that you can't tickle yourself," says Dr. Flanagan. "One explanation is that since all the sensations are completely predictable, we do 'sensory attenuation' which reduces our touch perception." Because people continually receive a barrage of sensory information, it's necessary to distinguish between what is caused by our own movements and what is due to changes in the outside world. ©Queen's University, 2005

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 8407 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Swordtails, colorful, common aquarium fish, size up their swords before fighting, and often a male just has to show his big sword to scare off challengers, according to a new study in the latest Animal Behavior journal. Yet another study in the same publication concluded that female swordtails prefer male swordtails with big, striped swords. Researchers even think the female fixation on these bright appendages led to their emergence in the first place, since female fondness for novel traits and bright colors appears to have preceded the appearance of swords on males. The finding suggests the creation of some secondary sexual characteristics may be influenced, and even controlled, by the opposite sex. For male swordtails, this characteristic is an extension of the caudal fin, or tail, that looks like a pointy sword. "It is not terribly rigid and cannot be manipulated very efficiently," said Kari Benson, who co-authored the first paper with Alexandra Basolo. "It is not useful as a weapon. It is only used as a visual signal in a fight." © 2006 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 8406 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Alison Motluk Aspirin prevents cardiovascular events in both women and men – but in different ways, a new meta-study suggests. In women, aspirin reduces strokes, and in men it cuts down on heart attacks. But there are no statistically significant benefits the other way round, according to the analysis. “It appears that women respond differently to a given dose of aspirin than men,” says David Brown, a cardiologist at the Stony Brook School of Medicine in New York, US, and one of the authors. “Everything about the study is telling us that there’s a gender difference and we don’t understand it.” In people who already have cardiovascular disease, the benefits of low-dose aspirin are well-established – in both sexes. Aspirin’s cardiovascular effects are exerted by blocking the synthesis of thromboxane A2, a substance that causes the blood to clot. Even a single 100 milligram dose can be effective. But in people with moderate risk, the picture is less clear. Studies seem to indicate a reduction in coronary events, but most studies included few, if any, women. Brown and colleagues were interested in knowing if moderate-risk women would benefit to the same degree as men. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Stroke; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 8405 - Posted: 06.24.2010