CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- When it comes to focusing on a task amid distractions, some folks more than 60 years old are as mentally sharp as 22-year-olds. Others struggle. Researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have shed some light on why that is. Reporting in the current issue (September) of the quarterly journal Psychology and Aging, the scientists say there is less white matter in the frontal lobes of those who struggle with focusing. The differences became apparent through the use of functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) imaging of the brains of 40 individuals ranging in age from 19 to 87. "We found that both performance and brain-activation differences of older good performers and the older poor performers are predicted by changes in brain structure, specifically by the volume of white matter connecting the right and left hemispheres of the frontal lobes," said Arthur F. Kramer, a professor of psychology. Participants took part in a "flanker" experiment in which they viewed a line of five keyboard arrows on a computer screen and reacted by pushing one of four buttons that corresponded with the direction the center arrow was pointing. Sometimes the participants would be distracted by changes in direction by arrows not in the center.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 8075 - Posted: 10.27.2005

Michael Hopkin You can tell a lot about someone from how they treat their friends. As the results of a study of captive chimpanzees seem to show, our ape cousins are only in it for themselves. The study, led by Joan Silk of the University of California, Los Angeles, looked for evidence that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) will help other members of their group. But the apes seem to be indifferent at best to the welfare of their fellows. Silk and her colleagues presented captive chimps with an apparatus that allowed them to get food by pulling on one of two ropes. Choosing one of the ropes meant that the chimp could haul in a tasty titbit. Selecting the other yielded exactly the same reward, but another chimp in an adjacent cage also received a morsel to eat. Given that the chimp in charge got the same food reward regardless of which rope was selected, one might expect them to have shown some compassion and chosen the one that gave food to their companion too. "All they had to do was be nice," Silk says. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 8074 - Posted: 06.24.2010

For captive chimpanzees, friendship appears to run shallow. In a new behavioural study, chimps failed to lend a helping hand to unrelated animals from their own social group – even though they would have suffered no inconvenience by doing so. Researchers led by Joan Silk of the University California, Los Angeles, US, set captive chimps tests in which they obtained a food reward. They could choose either to gain a food reward for themselves, or for both themselves and another animal from their own group. In similar circumstances, people will help both friends and strangers – and may do so even if they incur a cost as a result. Behavioural scientists believe this is because people who are seen as being altruistic tend to get helped out more often themselves. When such tests are run with other people watching, experimental volunteers are especially generous. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 8073 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post Staff Writer The government will back down from a plan to require long-term studies of new psychiatric drugs before allowing them on the market, regulators said yesterday. The reversal of the recently adopted policy came after a panel of experts unanimously recommended against requiring such studies as a condition of approval. While such studies are needed, the experts said, delaying decisions on new medications would hurt patients. The panel's vote came after it heard a barrage of complaints from industry executives, academic researchers and patient advocates. All the critics predicted that the policy would lead to delays in bringing new drugs to market while providing little new information that may not apply to most patients. They also warned that the policy would cause drug companies to scale back on developing new drugs because of the potential increase in expense and risk. The new plan, which the Food and Drug Administration had begun to implement over the past six months, called for companies to conduct studies for as long as half a year before seeking approval of new drugs. Like many other medications, psychiatric drugs are typically approved on the basis of positive results from two short-term studies, each of which may last only eight weeks. © 2005 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 8072 - Posted: 06.24.2010

First-ever images of living human retinas have yielded a surprise about how we perceive our world. Researchers at the University of Rochester have found that the number of color-sensitive cones in the human retina differs dramatically among people—by up to 40 times—yet people appear to perceive colors the same way. The findings, on the cover of this week's journal Neuroscience, strongly suggest that our perception of color is controlled much more by our brains than by our eyes. "We were able to precisely image and count the color-receptive cones in a living human eye for the first time, and we were astonished at the results," says David Williams, Allyn Professor of Medical Optics and director of the Center for Visual Science. "We've shown that color perception goes far beyond the hardware of the eye, and that leads to a lot of interesting questions about how and why we perceive color." Williams and his research team, led by postdoctoral student Heidi Hofer, now an assistant professor at the University of Houston, used a laser-based system developed by Williams that maps out the topography of the inner eye in exquisite detail. The technology, known as adaptive optics, was originally used by astronomers in telescopes to compensate for the blurring of starlight caused by the atmosphere.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 8071 - Posted: 06.24.2010

As we continue to live longer we are becoming more and more prone to age-related diseases such as the so-called big four: heart disease, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer's disease or AD. Although an estimated 4.5 million Americans are believed to have AD, the only way to know for sure is with an autopsy. "Alzheimer's disease is a very difficult disorder to diagnose even in the late stages," explains Alzheimer's researcher Lee E. Goldstein from the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. "If were going to intervene early were going to have diagnose it early right now there is no good way to do that." Although we know a great deal about this disease, primarily from what genetics research has told us over the last ten years, what is needed is a biomarker or a "biological fingerprint" to help doctors spot the disease early. "We don't have good biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease: used not only for prediction and diagnosis, but also used for drug testing. If you want a way to screen to see how well the patient's doing beyond cognitive testing, if you want some kind of measure of whether the brain is being helped — using some kind of representative marker — we don't really have much in that way in Alzheimer's disease," says Goldstein's colleague from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard, Rudolph Tanzi, who was one of the geneticists to find the first disease-related genes. © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Vision
Link ID: 8070 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The hunt for genes implicated in schizophrenia has proven to be one of the most frustrating quests in psychiatry. But scientists are zeroing in on some important players, including a gene involved in breaking down the neurotransmitter dopamine. Now, a study of children missing a copy of that gene indicates that precise levels of dopamine are required for proper cognitive function. The COMT gene, originally identified in 1957, has become perhaps the most intensively studied of any in psychiatric genetics. The gene exists in two forms--a high-active and a low-active version, which causes less and more dopamine to accumulate in synapses, respectively. Individuals can have either two high-active or two low-active copies of the gene, or one of each. Studies have shown that people with a low-active pair, and thus relatively high levels of dopamine in the brain, are a little more efficient cognitively than people with two high-active versions. But if the levels are too far afield, the brain can be impaired. A team led by psychiatrist Doron Gothelf, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University in California, investigated this by studying individuals missing one copy of the COMT gene, a deletion that occurs in one out of every 4000 births. They followed 24 children with the deletion--called velo-cardial-facial syndrome, which impairs health and mental development. © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 8069 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ST. LOUIS -- Saint Louis University research shows a new class of drugs may hold promise in treating brain chemical problems such as Alzheimer's disease, says the principal investigator of research published in an early on-line version of Peptides. "We found that we can develop antisense – which is a molecular compound – to cross the blood brain barrier enough to alter brain function. This can have a profound effect on treating diseases that occur because there is too much or too little of a certain kind of protein in the brain," says William A. Banks, M.D., professor of geriatrics and pharmacological and physiological sciences at Saint Louis University and principal investigator. "The blood brain barrier is the Holy Grail – it's the most difficult tissue to pass through." The article will run in the April print issue of Peptides. Antisense molecules are very specific compounds that scientists can create to plug into genetic pathways and block certain genes from producing harmful proteins. Many scientists believe that overproduction of the amyloid beta protein in the brain causes Alzheimer's disease. Previous Saint Louis University research has found that scientists can develop antisense to cross the blood brain barrier and lower levels of amyloid beta protein in mice.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 8068 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Zapping the brain with an electrical current could one day control high blood pressure in people, a new study suggests. UK researchers have shown for the first time that stimulating a certain part of the brain with implanted electrodes can influence arterial blood pressure in a predictable way in patients. Short bursts of electrical stimulation were applied in an area in the midbrain called the periaqueductal grey matter (PAG) in 15 awake patients. The patients had already had the deep brain electrodes fitted as a treatment for chronic pain. The stimulation lowered blood pressure in patients who had the electrodes near the front (or ventral) part of the PAG. In patients where the electrodes were near the back (or dorsal) part, blood pressure could be increased. “It’s very early days yet, but this is an exciting preliminary finding,” says Alexander Green, at the department of neurosurgery, Oxford University, UK, who believes the technique has great potential. But he cautions that the surgery to place the electrodes in the brain carries a one in 300 risk of stroke. For patients receiving the implants to treat severe conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, the risk may be acceptable. But that is currently far from the case for patients with blood pressure problems. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 8067 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY Helen's friend was alarmed. She had called Helen at 9 in the morning and found her speech slow and slurred. So the friend asked a neighbor to go immediately to Helen's apartment in Brooklyn to check on her. It took a long time for Helen to respond to the doorbell. When she finally opened the door, the neighbor, too, was alarmed: Helen was getting dressed but she had left the shower running. Her movements were awkward, as if half her body was not functioning properly. The neighbor called Helen's doctor, who said she should be taken to the hospital without delay. Helen remembers none of this. After testing her from head to toe, the doctors concluded that Helen had had a T.I.A. - a transient ischemic attack, commonly called a mini-stroke, in which the blood supply to part of the brain is cut off for a brief period, in Helen's case, her friends estimate, for about 20 minutes. Though T.I.A.'s leave no residual effects detectable by the patient or by sophisticated medical tests, they can portend a major stroke. As a result, it is critically important for someone with such an attack to get prompt medical attention and treatment - often something as simple as a daily aspirin - to prevent a far more serious blockage to the brain. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 8066 - Posted: 10.25.2005

By LAURIE TARKAN When Sara Martinez noticed her memory slipping, it seemed an especially cruel turn of events. "I've always had an excellent memory. It was my claim to fame," said Ms. Martinez, 57. "Now, I forget people's names, I forget appointments, I forget scenes from the opera." A readout of an electroencephalograph, which monitors brain waves, and is being tested as a way to look for signs of Alzheimer's disease. Ms. Martinez, who lives in New York, said she was also worried about her future. Her father died of a dementia that she believes was Alzheimer's disease; her mother, still living, has lost her memory to a disorder called vascular dementia. So when a friend told her about a study at New York University that uses an electroencephalograph to monitor brain waves and predict who will get Alzheimer's, Ms. Martinez enrolled. Buoyed by preliminary reports of early detection tests for Alzheimer's, an increasing number of people, worried about their family history or their own forgetfulness, are seeking clues about their mental fate. A wide variety of detection methods are being studied, including the EEG, sophisticated brain-scanning techniques, paper-and-pencil neuropsychological tests, genetic tests and even scratch-and-sniff tests. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 8065 - Posted: 10.25.2005

Scientists have discovered that schizophrenia sufferers are not fooled by a visual illusion and are able to judge it more accurately than non-schizophrenic observers. The study by UCL (University College London) and King's College London suggests that in everyday life, schizophrenics take less account of visual context. If this is part of a more general failure to deal appropriately with context, it could explain why some sufferers might misattribute people's actions or feel persecuted. The study, published in the journal Current Biology, used an illusion where an object's contrast appears reduced by its surroundings. A medium-contrast patterned disc was shown to volunteers, who had to judge its appearance in the presence of a high-contrast background. Of the 15 participants with chronic schizophrenia, 12 were found to make more accurate judgments than the most accurate person in a control group of 33 non-schizophrenic volunteers. Dr Steven Dakin, of the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, says: "We often think of people with schizophrenia as not seeing the world the way it really is – for example, during hallucinations – but we have shown that sometimes their vision can be more accurate than non-sufferers.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Vision
Link ID: 8064 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Robert Sanders BERKELEY – Parents whose grown children have not yet flown the nest can only sympathize with the Western bluebird. While female fledglings fly off on their own in late summer, their brothers typically hang around through the winter and into the next breeding season, living off the bounty of their parents' larder. As with humans, though, as the money runs low, the kids split, according to a new study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. Janis Dickinson, a research associate with the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley and a newly appointed associate professor of natural resources at Cornell University, discovered parallels between human and bird families while studying the evolution of delayed dispersal, or natal philopatry - the tendency for offspring to stay at or near home rather than look for a new place to live and breed. Such behavior is common among cooperatively breeding birds as well as humans, and, at least in birds, it leads to close-knit families. Copyright UC Regents

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 8063 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An emotional buffer zone in the brain may not be working as it should in women who experience premenstrual moodiness, a new study suggests. David Silbersweig and colleagues at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, US, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of 12 women whose moods remained steady throughout their menstrual cycles. From 1 to 5 days before menstruation, and 8 to 12 days after, the women’s brains were scanned as they were shown printed words with either negative, neutral, or positive connotations – words like “rape”, “cancer”, “bookcase”, “rotate”, “gentle” and “delighted” – to engage the emotion-processing part of the brain. At the same time, the women were motivated to complete a simple cognitive task. The scans showed that the orbitofrontal cortex – part of the brain involved in controlling emotions and regulating motivation – was more active during the task in the days before menstruation. After menstruation, that part of the brain was relatively inactive during the task. Silbersweig says that the difference in brain activity may “buffer” hormonal changes in these women, helping them to maintain a consistent emotional state. “Because this area is kicking in, these women are able to avoid moodiness,” he says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 8062 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michelle Roberts, BBC News health reporter Scientists say they have proof that the sex of the brain makes men and women more prone to different diseases. Doctors know that women are more likely than men to have depression, anxiety or an eating disorder, while men are at higher risk of Parkinson's disease. Post-mortem and brain imaging studies show that male and female brains are physically different. Now scientists say they can to link the two together and suggest future disease cures may be "gender-specific". The sex of a brain is decided in the mother's womb and depends, among other factors, on hormone levels. Higher levels of testosterone makes a male brain and oestrogen a female one. Professor Dick Swaab from The Netherlands Institute for Brain Research in Amsterdam, said the proof for this comes from studies of transsexuals - people who know, often from a very early age, that they are born in the wrong gender body. "The theory is that the sex difference in the sex organs develops early in pregnancy - in the first few months while in utero - while sexual differentiation of the brain occurs later in the second half of pregnancy and postnatally." That would mean certain factors could interfere with the sexual differentiation of the sex organs and brain in an independent way because there is a time lapse between the two. (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 8061 - Posted: 10.24.2005

By PATRICIA COHEN Can the generally disappointing crop of national leaders today be attributed to the Prozac Generation's addiction to cheeriness? That is one strain of thought in Joshua Wolf Shenk's book, which argues that Abraham Lincoln's lifelong struggle with depression was responsible for his becoming one of America's greatest presidents. The idea that suffering fuels creativity and wisdom is an old one, but in a country where 25 million people take antidepressants, it has its limits. The emotionally suffering artist stokes our romantic imagination; the emotionally suffering politician evokes panic. Who wants to think about Eeyore nose to nose with bin Laden? But depression, Shenk says, has gotten bad press. This is not a contrarian's gimmick; he has firsthand knowledge. In previous writings about his own depression, Shenk credited it with shaping his personality. That he would then conclude the same about his hero should not be all that surprising. If "Lincoln's Melancholy," a thoughtful but uneven book, is the product of a particularly personal experience, it is also the result of the latest currents in psychology and Lincoln studies. After years of dismissing the significance of Lincoln's inner life, scholars have reversed course in the last two decades. (A history of this history is nicely summarized in the afterword.) And in a series of 1998 lectures at Harvard, Andrew Delbanco linked Lincoln's private despair with his public work. "The lesson of Lincoln's life," he said, is that "a passion to secure justice" can be a "remedy for melancholy." Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 8060 - Posted: 10.24.2005

For the first time, researchers have found evidence of a split in the migration pattern of a species of bird, a behavior that some theorize could lead to a new species. Bands of the European blackcap, which typically breed in Austria and Germany, have begun flying to two separate locations for the winter: one group goes south to Portugal, Spain and North Africa, whereas the other flies north to Britain and Ireland. Scientists studying the two groups found that the birds that wintered together in the north tended to mate with each other once they arrived back in Austria and Germany. These birds also produced more young than those that wintered in the south, which could improve their evolutionary chances of diverging. "The 'British' birds tend to arrive on the breeding grounds earlier than the southern ones, allowing them to gain access to the best territories--a bit like getting their towels on the best sun-loungers first," said ornithologist Stuart Bearhop of the Queen's University Belfast, whose team published its results in the current issue of Science. The scientists arrived at their conclusions by studying birds from multiple sites over two winters and two summers. In the winters, the team analyzed the ratio of the chemical signatures in claw clippings from the birds, which can be tied to the same chemical signatures in rain from specific regions. © 1996-2005 Scientific American, Inc

Keyword: Evolution; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 8059 - Posted: 06.24.2010

STANFORD, Calif. - A gene that regulates dopamine levels in the brain is involved in the development of schizophrenia in children at high risk for the disorder, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and the University of Geneva. The finding adds to mounting evidence of dopamine's link to psychiatric and neurological disorders. It may also allow physicians to pinpoint a subset of these children for treatment before symptoms start. "The hope is that we will one day be able to identify the highest-risk groups and intervene early to prevent a lifetime of problems and suffering," said Allan L. Reiss, MD. "As we gain a much better understanding of these disorders, we can design treatments that are much more specific and effective." Reiss is the Robbins Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and director of the school's Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research. He is also a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. The research, which will be published online Oct. 23, will appear in print in the November issue of Nature Neuroscience.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 8058 - Posted: 10.24.2005

Experts have launched a course to teach the family members of young people with eating disorders how to offer care and support. Over a million people in the UK have an eating disorder, many of them teenagers and some children as young as seven. Effective treatment early on can mean a successful outcome in 90% of cases, but often it is difficult for loved ones to know what to do for the best. King's College London has begun a course to give carers necessary skills. The Collaborative Caring Course teaches the necessary skills to understand eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia, and the consequential behavioural changes. It is hoped it will help family members deal with the impact eating disorders have on their lives as well as to inspire change in the sufferer. Professor Janet Treasure from The Eating Disorder Research Unit, who is running the free course, said she hoped to dispel common eating disorder myths. These include the misconception that families, in particular mothers, are responsible for their daughter developing an eating disorder; that people with anorexia nervosa choose to have their illness and that people with eating disorders are trying to punish their parents. "Understanding and support are vital," she said. (C)BBC

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 8057 - Posted: 10.22.2005

By GINA KOLATA Dr. Lewis G. Maharam, the medical director for the New York City Marathon and marathons in San Diego, Phoenix, Nashville and Virginia Beach, said he was taking every opportunity this year to educate runners about the biggest threat to their lives on race day - drinking too much water. He knows the danger: in their zeal to avoid becoming dehydrated, runners may end up drinking so much that they dilute their blood. Water rushes into cells, including cells of the brain. The swollen brain cells press against the skull, and the result can be fatal. The resulting condition is known as hyponatremia - too much water. "There are no reported cases of dehydration causing death in the history of world running," Maharam said. "But there are plenty of cases of people dying of hyponatremia." No one knows how many have died, said Dr. Arthur Siegel, the chief of internal medicine at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., and the designated hyponatremia team leader for recent Boston Marathons. But he said that perhaps a dozen hyponatremia deaths had been recognized, according to informal communications among doctors at recent marathons. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 8056 - Posted: 10.22.2005