By Terri Sapienza After the sores broke open and I got a pain in my chest -- not on my chest, but deep inside my chest -- I knew it was time to call the doctor. The episode had started a week earlier, as seven bumps appeared on the right side of my chest running in a crooked, vertical row. I assumed I'd been bitten by something. A few days later the bumps sprouted white tops and then multiplied -- another patch of bumps emerged under my right arm. The itching got worse. Poison ivy, I figured. I used cortisone cream and willed myself not to scratch. But chest pain has a way of getting your attention, as did the headaches and a burning sensation under my arm. I headed for the doctor. My physician, Peter J. Ouellette of Georgetown University, took one look, asked a few questions and announced his diagnosis: shingles. I repeated it, to make sure I had heard correctly. Shingles. I had heard of shingles, but had no idea what it was or what it meant. "It's one of the adult forms of chickenpox," Ouellette said, reassuringly. "You'll be fine." © 2005 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 7990 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered that a protein found in the brain is genetically linked to alcoholism and anxiety. Results of the study are published in the October issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The researchers studied rats selectively bred for high alcohol preference (P rats), which were found to have high anxiety levels and consume greater amounts of alcohol than alcohol non-preferring (NP) rats. The researchers focused on a molecule called CREB, or cyclic AMP responsive element binding protein, which is thought to be involved in a variety of brain functions. When CREB is activated, it regulates the production of another brain protein called neuropeptide Y. The higher-imbibing P rats were found to have lower levels of CREB and neuropeptide Y in certain regions of the amygdala -- an area of the brain associated with emotion, fear and anxiety -- than their teetotaling NP cousins. "This is the first direct evidence that a hereditary deficiency of CREB protein in the central amygdala is associated with high anxiety and alcohol-drinking behaviors," said lead researcher Subhash Pandey, associate professor of psychiatry and director of neuroscience alcoholism research at the UIC College of Medicine.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 7989 - Posted: 10.04.2005

By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News — Researchers studying the pigments that color flowers have stumbled onto a natural combination that creates subtle green fluorescent patterns on petals. The patterns might be to be visible to bees, bats and other evening pollinators with eyes especially sensitive to green light. It is the first known case of a plant possibly using fluorescence to attract pollinators. "Fluorescence can be an important signal in mate choice for budgerigars and possibly in mantis shrimp, and it may be that in flowers it attracts pollinators," reported Fernando Gandía-Herrero and his colleagues at the University of Murcia in Spain, in a brief article in a recent issue of Nature. Gandía-Herrero and his colleagues extracted pigments from the petals of Mirabilis jalapa flowers, commonly known as four o'clocks, and found that when one pigment chemical, betaxanthin, is activated by the blue light contained in sunlight, it fluoresces green light that contributes to the yellow color of some of its petals. On other petal parts, however, green fluorescence is efficiently sucked up before it can escape by another pigment — violet betacyanin — the team reports. The result is an internal light-filtering system that controls the amounts and locations of green fluorescence escaping the petals, and therefore controls the pattern of green light seen by pollinators. © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 7988 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Chimpanzees have a reputation for being noisy, rambunctious animals, but new research from The Jane Goodall Institute indicates that wild chimps possess an enormous amount of self-control, especially in terms of their vocalizations. The research found that chimps not only know when to be quiet, but also tell each other to shut up when danger lurks. Findings will be presented at the joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and NOISE-CON 2005, which runs from Oct. 17-21 in Minneapolis, Minn. "The pant-hoot means something like 'Hey! This is me! I'm here!,'" said Michael Wilson, lead author of the study. "It's a way to keep track of allies and associates." Wilson, director of field research at Goodall's Gombe Stream Research Centre in Tanzania, added, "People studying chimpanzees use a rather similar call to find one another in the dense forest — a sort of loud 'hoo' that can be heard over a few hundred yards. © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 7987 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Findings from the largest survey ever mounted on the co-occurrence of psychiatric disorders among U.S. adults afford a sharper picture than previously available of major depressive disorder* (MDD) in specific population subgroups and of MDD’s relationship to alcohol use disorders (AUDs)** and other mental health conditions. The new analysis of data from the 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) shows for the first time that middle age and Native American race increase the likelihood of current or lifetime MDD, along with female gender, low income, and separation, divorce, or widowhood. Asian, Hispanic, and black race-ethnicity reduce that risk. Conducted by the NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the analysis appears in the Monday, October 3, 2005 Archives of General Psychiatry. The NESARC involved face-to-face interviews with more than 43,000 non-institutionalized individuals aged 18 years and older and questions that reflect diagnostic criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). Its principal foci were alcohol dependence (alcoholism) and alcohol abuse and the psychiatric conditions that most frequently co-occur with those AUDs. Because of its size and scrutiny of multiple sociodemographic factors, the NESARC provides more precise information than previously available on between-group differences that influence risk.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 7986 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BETHESDA, Md. – It's often said that the key to Bill Bradley's basketball success was summed up in the title of the 1965 book by John McPhee, "A sense of where you are." Bradley always seemed to know where all nine other players were, where Bradley himself was in relation to the basket – and where the open spot was to be found for his stylized jump shot. "Navigation is a very interesting problem: It's very abstract and involves a high level of higher integrative, cognitive skills," noted Patricia E. Sharp, of Bowling Green State University. "And it turns out that the humble laboratory rat probably solves navigational problems about as well as we do," she adds. Sharp and her collaborator Shawnda Turner-Williams measured the electrical firing of 51 individual cells in the medial mammillary nucleus of five rats' brains – "to our knowledge…the first recordings from medial mammillary body cells in awake animals," according to their research paper. The paper "Movement-related correlates of single cell activity in the medial mammillary nucleus of the rat during a pellet-chasing task," appears in the Journal of Neurophysiology, published by the American Physiological Society. Cell firing rates indicate "unambiguous" left-right turning, correlate to speed

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 7985 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Two Australian scientists have been awarded the Nobel prize for medicine for their discovery that stomach ulcers can be caused by a bacterial infection. Robin Warren and Barry Marshall showed the bacterium Helicobacter pylori plays a key role in the development of both stomach and intestinal ulcers. Thanks to their work these ulcers are often no longer a long-term, frequently disabling problem. They can now be cured with a short-term course of drugs and antibiotics. In 1982, when H. pylori was discovered by Marshall and Warren, stress and lifestyle were considered the major causes of stomach and intestinal ulcers. It is now firmly established that the bacterium causes more than 90% of duodenal (intestinal) ulcers and up to 80% of gastric (stomach) ulcers. Dr Warren, a pathologist from Perth, paved the way for the breakthrough when he discovered that small curved bacteria colonised the lower part of the stomach in about 50% of patients from which biopsies had been taken. He also made the crucial observation that signs of inflammation were always present in the stomach lining close to where the bacteria were seen. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 7984 - Posted: 10.03.2005

By GIDEON LEWIS-KRAUS There are "no famously sane poets," writes the British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. He might have added that there are no famously sane mathematicians, few notoriously even-keeled guitarists. On the stage of our cultural history, "the sane don't have any memorable lines." So begins "Going Sane," Phillips's unraveling of sanity. This book, like previous ones such as "On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored," brings his original and accessible readings of psychoanalytic thought to bear on some unexamined phrases of daily life. Historically, he argues, sanity has been consigned to one of two fates: it's either been ignored because it's not dramatic enough (Hamlet gets all the good lines), or it's been written off by cultural critics (in a mad world, grumble malcontents from Rousseau to Foucault, only the crazy are authentic). Some of his categorical claims are inflated. Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, for example, spring to mind as imaginatively sane literary characters. Nevertheless, his broad story of sanity's humble position in a madness-crazed culture is persuasive. We have detailed iconographies of insanity, but few compelling definitions of sanity. Phillips has inherited the tradition of psychoanalysts as philosophers of happiness. His lucid essays reveal a concrete hope that psychoanalytic insight might reduce human anguish. More is at stake, he believes, than just the definition of a single word. He fears that our reluctance to ask ourselves exactly what sanity means might be thwarting our attempts to attain it. The problem is our tendency to romanticize madness. The mad "have traditionally been idealized, if not glamorized, as inspired; as being in touch . . . with powers and forces and voices" otherwise reclusive. Sanity, on the other hand, is described - when it is described at all - as a matter of moderation, self-control and mechanical rationality. It's easy to absorb the lesson that the mad are idiosyncratic and complex while the sane are pedestrian. Sanity may represent our nominal ideal, but Sylvia Plath and John Nash are the box-office draws. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 7983 - Posted: 10.03.2005

THE idea is as simple as its implications are seismic: women, as a group, lack the evolutionary genetic intelligence to master the highest strata of mathematics and the hard sciences. This is the central tenet of a contentious theory forwarded by famed US social scientist Charles Murray, who a decade ago made similarly explosive claims about the inferior genetic intelligence of blacks in his best-selling book The Bell Curve. "It's quite satisfying to see that I didn't get nearly the hostile reaction I was expecting this time," Murray says from his home near Washington. "After The Bell Curve, I was the Antichrist, so perhaps we have moved on and we can start looking at this data in an un-hysterical way." Perhaps. Another explanation may be that Murray has used up his 15 minutes of fame. Lisa Randall, an eminent Harvard theoretical physicist and cosmologist, had agreed to dissect Murray's work, which appeared in the September issue of Commentary magazine in the US, for Inquirer but on reflection declined to respond. "The reason is that this just isn't news and it's not worthy of being covered," she says. "If it really gets to the point where people accept it, I can explain the many logical fallacies in his piece." © The Australian

Keyword: Intelligence; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7982 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Emma Marris A chemical cocktail that can lure lampreys up streams to spawn has been identified by researchers, who have also managed to synthesize one of the key ingredients. The implications for fisheries management, they say, are vast. Lampreys are strange creatures, which, despite having no jaws, can parasitically attach themselves to other fish with a toothed disk, and suck out the prey's bodily fluids. Atlantic lampreys (Petromyzon marinus) made their way into the Great Lakes of North America a hundred years ago, and since then have become a massive problem; each lamprey can kill up to 40 pounds of fish that might otherwise have gone to the marketplace. Now ecologist Peter Sorensen and chemist Thomas Hoye at the University of Minnesota, and their colleagues, say they may have found a way to defeat these lampreys. The key, they say, is the chemicals that lampreys use to find spawning grounds. The team set out to isolate these compounds from thousands of litres of water containing lamprey larvae, collected from a lamprey farm where 50,000 of the fish are fed and tended for research. When adult lampreys are ready to breed, they follow the subtle perfume exuded by larval lampreys to find a stream that will be hospitable to their offspring. The team tested the ingredients of the larvae extract to see which one was the best lure. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7981 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Higher cognitive functions, like language and visual processing, have long been thought to reside primarily in the brain's cerebrum. But a body of research in premature infants at Children's Hospital Boston is documenting an important role for the cerebellum – previously thought to be principally involved in motor coordination – and shows that cerebellar injury can have far-reaching developmental consequences. The latest study, in the October issue of Pediatrics, also demonstrates that the cerebrum and cerebellum are tightly interconnected. Sophisticated MRI imaging of 74 preterm infants' brains revealed that when there was injury to the cerebrum, the cerebellum failed to grow to a normal size. When the cerebral injury was confined to one side, it was the opposite cerebellar hemisphere that failed to grow normally. The reverse was also true: when injury occurred in one cerebellar hemisphere, the opposite cerebral hemisphere was smaller than normal. "There seems to be an important developmental link between the cerebrum and the cerebellum," says Catherine Limperopoulos, PhD, in Children's Department of Neurology, the study's lead author. "We're finding that the two structures modulate each other's growth and development. The way the brain forms connections between structures may be as important as the injury itself."

Keyword: Autism; ADHD
Link ID: 7980 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Some cases of obsessive compulsive disorder in children may be a result of an immune reaction following an infection, scientists believe. Researchers found children with OCD were more likely to have antibodies associated with streptococcal infection than those without the disorder. But the joint Institute of Psychiatry and Institute of Neurology team said more research was needed. The findings were reported in the British Journal of Psychiatry. About 3% of the population suffers from the anxiety disorder, which is generally treated by drugs or cognitive behaviour therapy counselling. Researchers tested the blood of 50 children with OCD for the presence of anti-basal ganglia antibodies, which are produced when antibodies raised in response to a streptococcus infection react with part of the brain. Such an immune response is closely linked to movement disorders, such as Sydenham's chorea, which themselves are linked to OCD. The team found that 42% of the OCD children had the antibodies, compared to just 5% of the 190-strong control group. Writing in the British Journal of Psychiatry, the authors said the findings were significant and suggested that "autoimmunity may have a role in the genesis and/or maintenance of some cases of OCD". And they added: "Further examination of this autoimmune subgroup may provide insight into the neurobiology of OCD, and explain whether the antibodies concerned are causing the disease." (C)BBC

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 7979 - Posted: 10.01.2005

By BENEDICT CAREY A drug commonly prescribed for attention deficit disorder as an alternative to stimulants may increase suicidal thinking in children and adolescents, federal drug regulators warned yesterday. The warning stemmed from a finding of a large-scale government effort to examine whether psychiatric drugs had previously unrecognized side effects. The drug, Strattera from Eli Lilly, will carry a prominent "black box" warning - the Food and Drug Administration's most serious alert - on its label, said F.D.A. officials and Lilly representatives. The drug agency instructed Lilly to add the warning based on the company's findings from a search of its data from clinical trials of the drug. The search, which analyzed reports of suicidal thinking among patients taking the drug, was conducted at the agency's request, said Dr. Thomas Laughren, who directs the psychiatric products division at the drug agency. Dr. Laughren said the evidence of suicide risk for Strattera was not strong enough for doctors to change the way they prescribe the drug. But the finding is likely to fan the debate over whether drugs for attention deficit disorder are overprescribed for children, and whether the risks are fully understood. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 7978 - Posted: 10.01.2005

Noam Chomsky Thirty-five years ago I agreed, in a weak moment, to give a talk with the title “Language and Freedom.” When the time came to think about it, I realized that I might have something to say about language and about freedom, but the word “and” was posing a serious problem. There is a possible strand that connects language and freedom, and there is an interesting history of speculation about it, but in substance it is pretty thin. The same problem extends to my topic here, “universality in language and human rights.” There are useful things to say about universality in language and about universality in human rights, but that troublesome connective raises difficulties. The only way to proceed, as far as I can see, is to say a few words about universality in language, and in human rights, with barely a hint about the possible connections, a problem still very much on the horizon of inquiry. To begin with, what about universality in language? The most productive way to approach the problem, I think, is within the framework of what has been called “the biolinguistic perspective,” an approach to language that treats the capacity to acquire and use language as an aspect of human biology. This approach began to take shape in the early 1950s, much influenced by recent developments in mathematics and biology, and interacted productively with a more general shift of perspective in the study of mental faculties, commonly called “the cognitive revolution.” It would be more accurate, I think, to describe it as a second cognitive revolution, reviving and extending important insights and contributions of the cognitive revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries, which had regrettably been forgotten, and—despite some interesting historical research on rationalist and Romantic theories of language and mind—are still little known. Copyright Boston Review, 1993–2005.

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 7977 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In a recent study, Dr. Ingolf Bach and colleagues from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester and the University of Hamburg (Germany) describe a novel role for the ubiquitin/proteosome protein degradation pathway in the regulation of local actin dynamics in neurons. The authors are able to show that the ubiquitin ligase Rnf6 polyubiquitinates the kinase LIMK1, targeting it for proteosomal degradation in the growth cones of hippocampal neurons. LIMK1 regulates the dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton primarily via phosphorylation of the actin depolymerization factors ADF/cofilin, with important consequences for cell morphology, cell motility, and the development of neuronal projections. Changes in LIMK1 concentration have an impact in neuronal growth cone actin dynamics and axon formation. The authors focus on the RING finger protein Rnf6 due to its similarity to the previously identified protein RLIM, which has been shown to bind to nuclear LIM domains and critically regulate the biological activity of LIM-HD transcription factors. The authors find high levels of Rnf6 protein in axonal projections of motor neurons and dorsal root ganglia neurons in mouse embryos at a time in which projections are actively developing, suggesting a role of this protein in the development of these neurons. They are able to show that this is indeed the case by RNAi-mediated knock-down of Rnf6 in primary hippocampal neurons, which stimulate axon outgrowth, and by over-expression of Rnf6 that results in a significant decrease in axon length.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7976 - Posted: 06.24.2010

There comes a time when parents pass the birds and bees tale on to their daughters. But that sensitive discussion can require a good advice book. One, The Mother's Book, applauded mom's cautionary tale to a "girl of about ten" — "She has taught her how to care for herself during the menstrual period; not to get her feet wet; not to allow the bowels to become constipated; not to over-exercise; not to read too much, nor dance or play tennis." Of course, that sage advice, written in 1927, makes us chuckle today. But it illustrates something not so funny — experts say we still don't know enough about the biological storms that hormones whip up at various times of a woman's ovarian cycle. Now, neurologists may be closer to cracking the brain chemistry that drives troublesome behavioral changes associated with premenstrual syndrome, or PMS, and its cousin premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD, by looking at mice. Female mice have ovarian cycles that mirror ours. Researchers tracked a protein, called GABA, that is part of a specific brain receptor on nerve cells that seems to contribute to the cells' firing activity. "The business end of the nerve cells is… they transmit information to other nerve cells," by sending signals, something scientists call firing action potential, says Istvan Mody, a neurologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. If firing action potential goes awry, there can be trouble for brain cells. "They fire a lot more and they can produce all kinds of damaging effects such as seizures or anxiety, or any other hyper-excitable events in the brain," Mody says. © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 7975 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists may have gained an important insight into the age-old mystery of why consciousness fades as we nod off to sleep. Lines of communication between various parts of cerebral cortex--which buzz with activity during wakefulness--break down during slumber, researchers report today in Science. Early neuroscientists assumed that consciousness wanes during sleep because the cortex simply shuts off. But electroencephalography (EEG) and other modern methods have since ruled out that explanation, showing that the electrical chatter and metabolism of neurons in the cortex continues unabated during sleep. That left neuroscientists with a puzzle: If the brain is still active, why does consciousness wane? Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, suspected that a communication breakdown might be the reason. Tononi has spent years developing a theory that equates consciousness with the integration of information. Communication between regions of the cortex might be one sign of this integration--and of consciousness, Tononi says. To test that idea, he and his team recorded electrical activity in the brains of six sleepy volunteers using high-density EEG. Before the subjects nodded off, the researchers stimulated a small patch of right frontal cortex with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a method that uses magnetic pulses to induce an electrical current inside the head. When the subjects were awake, TMS elicited waves of neural activity that spread through neighboring areas of right frontal and parietal cortex and to corresponding regions on the left side of the brain. During non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep, the same TMS stimulus only elicited neural activity at the site of stimulation. © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 7974 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Even after they have paired with a male, the female North American barn swallow still comparison-shops for sexual partners. And forget personality; the females judge males by their looks -- the reddish color of the males' breast and belly feathers. If the male's red breast is not as dark as other males in the population, the female is more likely to leave him and then secretly copulate with another male, according to a Cornell University study featured on the cover of the journal Science (Sept. 30, 2005). "The bad news for male swallows is the mating game is never over," said lead author Rebecca Safran, who conducted the study while a Cornell postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolutionary biology, and in the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. "It is dynamic and continual. This is something that most humans can relate to -- think of how much time and money we spend on our looks and status long after we have established stable relationships." Barn swallow (Hirundo rustica erythrogaster) males have a wash of reddish-chestnut color from their throats to their bellies, and this color varies among birds from very pale red-brown to a dark rusty-red. Like many songbirds, half of all male barn swallows typically care for at least one young chick that was actually fathered by another bird. The researchers used this widespread phenomenon of cheating to test the factors that may keep a female barn swallow faithful to her mate. Sometimes males even rear an entire nest of illegitimate young.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 7973 - Posted: 10.01.2005

The official death toll from the outbreak of Japanese encephalitis in a state in northern India approached a thousand on Friday, and the disease has started spilling beyond Uttar Pradesh and into other states. In Nepal, the deadly mosquito-borne illness, which is related to West Nile virus, has killed at least 250 people and made 1520 seriously ill. The outbreak started in July, and since then almost 3400 people have been infected in one district of Uttar Pradesh alone – Gorakhpur –according to estimates reported on Thursday. Japanese encephalitis (JE) is one of the “most scary” diseases to contract, says Jo Lines, a vector biologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK. “Why? Because it doesn’t usually kill you but often leaves you brain-damaged,” he told New Scientist. “If there are a thousand dead that means there is a vast toll of encephalitis brain-damaged people.” The disease can be prevented by a vaccine, but there has been a crippling shortage in the region. India says it produces about two million doses a year – not nearly enough to meet its requirements. “It needs vaccines. And it needs vaccines fast,” stresses Lines. “This is a disease you are not easily going to control with [mosquito] control.” Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 7972 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The brains of pathological liars have structural abnormalities that could make fibbing come naturally. “Some people have an edge up on others in their ability to tell lies,” says Adrian Raine, a psychologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “They are better wired for the complex computations involved in sophisticated lies.” He found that pathological liars have on average more white matter in their prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that is active during lying, and less grey matter than people who are not serial fibbers. White matter enables quick, complex thinking while grey matter mediates inhibitions. Raine says the combination of extra white matter and less grey matter could be giving people exactly the right mix of traits to make them into good liars. These are the first biological differences to be discovered between pathological liars and the general population. Other researchers have used brain imaging to show that the prefrontal cortex is more active when ordinary people tell lies. They are looking for ways to use this as an alternative to the polygraph test. Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Stress; Emotions
Link ID: 7971 - Posted: 06.24.2010