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

We all know motherhood changes the body. But research in animals shows it also changes the brain. As this ScienCentral News video explains, parenting seems to enhance learning and memory in both moms and dads. Coping day or night with the demands of a new born baby and worrying over every cough and sniffle are just in a day's work for parents, but it's something that people without kids often find hard to imagine being able to do… until they have kids of their own that is. So where do that cool head, that parenting instinct and those coping skills just materialize from? Sleep-deprived new mothers might find it hard to believe, but having kids may actually make you sharper. Brain researcher Kelly Lambert says that, at least in rodents, pregnancy and parenting change the brain and behavior in ways that go beyond nursing and nurturing. "From what we've seen, having a whole different being to take care of requires a whole new set of skills and a lot more awareness, cognitive awareness and multi-tasking," explains Lambert, professor and Chair of the psychology department at Randolph-Macon College. © ScienCentral, 2000-2006.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 8436 - Posted: 06.24.2010

When activated, a specific protein in the brain enhances long-term storage of fearful memories and strengthens previously established fearful memories, Yale School of Medicine researchers report this week in Nature Neuroscience. "This report is the first to demonstrate evidence of enhancements in memory reconsolidation in the brain," said the senior author, Jane Taylor, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry. "Understanding these molecular mechanisms may provide critical insights into psychiatric disorders." She said recent data suggest that memories can continue to be changed or eliminated long after they have been formed, or consolidated. Based on findings that suggest memories are susceptible to loss after retrieval, a mechanism that is required to maintain and place back memories into long-term storage has been proposed, Taylor said. "This 'reconsolidation' process is supported by studies suggesting that disruption of cellular functions known to be required for memory storage after retrieval of a memory can cause a specific loss of that memory," she said. Taylor and her colleagues found that within the amygdala, a brain region known to be critically involved in the creation and storage of fearful memories, selective activation of protein kinase A (PKA) is sufficient to enhance memory reconsolidation and strengthen a previously established fearful memory. Conversely, inhibiting PKA in the amygdala disrupted memory reconsolidation.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 8435 - Posted: 01.24.2006

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News In a female elephant gang, few animals bother the oldest and biggest of the group because they know she will not put up with any nonsense, according to a new study that found age and size determine wild female elephant hierarchies. The study, published in the current issue of Animal Behavior, presents some of the first data on dominance and the social lives of adult, wild female elephants, Loxodonta africana. Females of this species hang out together in family groups for most of their lives. Humans may shrink as they get older, but not elephants. "Female elephants never stop growing, so age and size are almost always linked," said Elizabeth Archie, who led the research. "Female elephants have two formidable weapons: their tusks and their huge body size. Tusks, horns and teeth are common in many species, but when these weapons are driven by a powerful animal that weighs thousands of pounds, the results can be fatal," she said. Archie, a Smithsonian Doctoral Fellow in the Genetics Department at the National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., explained to Discovery News that although female elephants can seriously hurt, or even kill, each other, they hardly ever do so because younger, smaller elephants quickly learn to defer to the group's dominant female. Copyright © 2006 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Aggression; Evolution
Link ID: 8434 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Helen Pearson If love is blind, then maybe humour is the attention-grabber. That's the conclusion of two recent studies that confirm a long-standing stereotype of flirting: that women like joky men, while men like women who laugh at their jokes. The idea that funny people are attractive may seem obvious. But there have been very few scientific studies to examine whether or not this is true. Eric Bressler of Westfield State College, Massachusetts, and colleague Sigal Balshine of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, did this by asking more than 200 male and female college students to examine photos of members of the opposite sex. Some had funny quotes pinned beneath them, such as: "My high school was so rough we had our own coroner." Others had bland ones: "I'd rather walk to school than take the bus." Women ranked the humorous men as better potential partners, the researchers found - and as more friendly, fun and popular. Men's view of a woman, on the other hand, appeared to be uninfluenced by her wit1. Bressler suspected that men and women do, in fact, both value a sense of humour in a mate, but that they might be looking for slightly different things: women valuing an ability to be funny and men valuing an ability to see the joke. ©2006 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 8433 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Philip E. Ross New findings in neurology always seem to come with the caveat that there are subtleties that need to be explained. It is therefore refreshing to consider a big, fat unsubtlety: the size of our brains. At first glance, a big brain's function seems simple: to think big thoughts. And indeed, brain size does loosely correlate with intelligence, between species and, as recent MRI studies confirm, within our own. Yet some people who are missing brain parts remain just fine with what little they've got. The cases have multiplied since brain scans became routine. Take the 50-something lawyer who, fearing Alzheimer's, came in for an MRI and got good news and bad news. He was fine, but his brain lacked a corpus callosum, the wrist-thick stalk that normally connects the brain's hemispheres. Still, he enjoyed a successful practice and had a verbal IQ of around 130 and a nonverbal IQ above 90. The patient exhibited subtle signs of abnormal behavior, says Warren S. Brown, a neuropsychologist who studies mind-body questions at the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.: "He just seemed odd--not remarkable, but he missed the point of social interaction." Brown adds that patients without a corpus callosum often do not get the point of jokes or understand pictures. Of course, most brain abnormalities are found because neurologists had reason to look for them. To get around such bias, Elliott Sherr, a neurologist at the University of San Francisco, decided to study all the MRIs his university's hospital had taken. One in several thousand turned out to lack the corpus callosum. © 1996-2006 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Laterality; Intelligence
Link ID: 8432 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School have discovered the gene responsible for a type of ataxia, spinocerebellar ataxia type 5 (SCA5), an incurable degenerative brain disease affecting movement and coordination. This is the first neurodegenerative disease shown to be caused by mutations in the protein â-III spectrin which plays an important role in the maintaining the health of nerve cells. The scientific discovery has historical implications as well--the gene was identified in an 11-generation family descended from the grandparents of President Abraham Lincoln, with the President having a 25 percent risk of inheriting the mutation. "We are excited about this discovery because it provides a genetic test that will lead to improved patient diagnoses and gives us new insight into the causes of ataxia and other neurodegenerative diseases, an important step towards developing an effective treatment," said Laura Ranum, Ph.D., senior investigator of the study and professor of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development at the University of Minnesota. Understanding the effects of this abnormal protein, which provides internal structure to cells, will clarify how nerve cells die and may provide insight into other diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The research will be published in the February print issue of Nature Genetics, and posted online Jan. 22, 2006.

Keyword: Movement Disorders
Link ID: 8431 - Posted: 01.23.2006

Acupuncture works by deactivating the area of the brain governing pain, a TV show will claim. Tuesday's programme - the first of three on complementary medicine - will show researchers carrying out brain scans on people having acupuncture. The BBC Two show will also feature heart surgery done using acupuncture instead of a general anaesthetic. The patient is conscious during the operation in China, but she was given sedatives and a local anaesthetic. In Alternative Medicine: The Evidence, volunteers are subjected to deep needling, which involves needles being inserted 1cm into the back of the hand at well-known acupuncture points. A control group undergoes superficial needling with needles placed only 1mm in. The needles are then twiddled until the participants feel a dull, achy or tingling sensation. For those in the deep needling group this stimulates the nervous system. During these two procedures, the volunteers underwent brain scans to see what, if any, effect there was in the brain. The team, including leading scientists from University College London, Southampton University and the University of York, found the superficial needling resulted in activation of the motor areas of the cortex, a normal reaction to pain. (C)BBC

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 8430 - Posted: 01.22.2006