Pig brain cells wrapped in a seaweed derivative could be implanted into human brains by next year to treat Huntington's disease, if approved. Researchers at New Zealand's Living Cell Technologies in Auckland have already had good results in monkeys. They told New Scientist they were seeking approval to do the same in humans in the US. The Food and Drugs Administration has already approved trials with animal tissue for Parkinson's disease. However, there is concern that using animal cells in humans could spread infections from animals to humans. Huntington's Disease is an inherited condition caused by a single faulty gene and affects one in 100,000 people. Although present from birth, symptoms normally appear when the person is between 30 and 50. Cells start to die in an area of the brain which helps control the movement of the body's muscles. Patients experience gradually worsening twitches, loss of muscle control, and memory loss and eventually die from the condition. In an attempt to minimise this damage in primates, the New Zealand team used pig brain cells taken from the lining of a brain structure known as the choroid plexus. These cells have a nurturing role, mopping up toxins and secreting a range of chemicals that are reduced in Huntington's and are essential for brain cell function. (C)BBC

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 7770 - Posted: 08.11.2005

A guessing game that lets players idle away a few minutes online could also teach computers how to recognise the world around them. The game, called Peekaboom, was devised by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in the US. It harnesses the brain power of online players to train a set of powerful vision recognition algorithms. This could eventually enable computers to recognise images in a similar way to humans - by focusing on the most relevant features. After signing up, a player is asked to slowly reveal parts of an image, chosen at random from the web - with an associated word describing it - to a second player. Player 2, in turn, must identify the whole image as quickly as possible. Player 1 can also tell their partner how "warm" or "cold" they are with each guess, or “peek”. The theory goes that Player 1 will choose to reveal the key features of the image first – those aspects that they consider best represents the whole. If the image was of a pig, for example, they might chose to reveal its distinctive snout to Player 2 first. "Intuitively, data collected from the game yields the portions of the image pertaining to the word," says developer Luis von Ahn. The approach could be used almost immediately to create search engines with a better knack for identifying images based on keywords entered into a search field. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 7769 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Our eyes need light to work, but a body of research seems to suggest that too much of the wrong kind of light can lead to diseases like age-related macular degeneration. So as you head out to the beach with your sunglasses, keep in mind that they may not be protecting you from all of the damaging rays of the sun. It's well known that ultraviolet or UV light, which we can't see, can damage both skin and eye cells. But vision researchers are uncovering links between disease and some light that we can see. Now there's more evidence that blue light (400 – 500nm) can damage our eyes, with people who have had cataracts removed being particularly vulnerable. "Blue light is the most energetic portion of the visible light spectrum," says ophthalmologist Bernard Godley, of the Retina Foundation of the Southwest in Dallas. "It's less energetic than UV radiation but it also has the ability to penetrate into tissue and cause cellular damage." Godley, working with an international team of researchers, has shown that chronic exposure to blue light damages retina cells in the lab — the same cells involved in age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness untreatable vision loss and legal blindness in the U.S. for people over the age of 60. © ScienCentral, 2000-2005

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 7768 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bethesda, MD – A new study indicates that mutant Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase (SOD1) enzymes that are associated with an inherited form of Lou Gehrig's disease cause the protein to become sticky in tissues. Partial unfolding of the mutant protein can expose hydrophobic residues that may promote abnormal interactions with other proteins or membranes in the cell. The research appears as the "Paper of the Week" in the August 19 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, an American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology journal. Over 5,600 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease each year. About 30,000 Americans have the disease at any given time, and 10% of cases are inherited. "Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a neurodegenerative disorder in which neurons of the motor pathways in the brain and spinal cord die," explains Dr. Lawrence J. Hayward of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. "It typically strikes during middle age, and although it may start with only mild weakness, the symptoms can spread insidiously over months to impair mobility, speech and swallowing, and ultimately the muscles required for respiration." Despite the prevalence of ALS, the biological mechanisms that kill the motor neurons in most patients are incompletely understood. However, for a fraction of inherited ALS patients, mutations in the gene for SOD1 cause the disease by creating a toxic enzyme. Evidence suggests that misfolding or partial unfolding of mutant SOD1 proteins in these patients might be key to the toxicity.

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 7767 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers at the University of Alberta have isolated a rare condition that prevents some children from recognizing a face they have seen before. They believe this conditions continues into adulthood. "We believe this has never been discovered before," said Carmen Rasmussen, a doctoral student in the U of A Department of Psychology. "And now we hope to be able to better diagnose people with this condition and develop interventions to help them." Rasmussen and her colleague, Dr. Glennis Liddell of the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital, studied 14 children with Nonverbal Learning Disability (NLD), a condition that makes it difficult to process nonverbal information. Children with NLD generally do well on most elements of aptitude tests except for those that involve visual spatial processing, such as recognizing and working with shapes. "It can be difficult to recognize someone with NLD because sometimes the symptoms are not always obvious," Rasmussen explained.

Keyword: Autism; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7766 - Posted: 08.11.2005

A gene that helps fruit flies develop alcohol tolerance has been found – and named “hangover”. The gene also controls the flies’ response to stress, and the researchers say that a similar pathway linking alcohol tolerance and stress probably functions in humans. The findings may explain why people who have been in a stressful situation often have a blunted response to alcohol and may drink more to feel inebriated, experts say, putting them at greater risk of becoming addicted. Ulrike Heberlein at the University of California at San Francisco, US, and Henrike Scholz from the University of Würzburg in Germany, exposed fruit flies to ethanol vapour. Intoxicated fruit flies show similar behaviour to tipsy humans: they lack coordination and postural control and then fall asleep. It took the flies an average of 20 minutes to recover following their exposure. After four hours on the wagon, the same Drosophila were again exposed to alcohol. By now, they had developed a tolerance to alcohol and so needed more to reach the same drunkenness, and took longer to “dry out” - 28 minutes. But flies with a defective form of the hangover gene still took 20 minutes to recover from inebriation time after time - never building up a tolerance. The researchers then investigated how the gene was involved in stress responses since, in humans at least, the alcohol and stress responses appear to be linked. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7765 - Posted: 06.24.2010

RESTON, Va.— The role of the brain’s opioid receptor system—or endorphin system—may hold the key to understanding and treating bulimia nervosa, according to research reported in the Society of Nuclear Medicine’s August issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. "Involvement of the opioid system may explain the addictive quality of this behavioral disorder," said Angela Guarda, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Md. The first imaging study to implicate the opioid system in bulimia nervosa shows differences in women with bulimia compared to healthy women, added J. James Frost, M.D., Ph.D., professor of radiology and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins and co-author of "Regional ì-Opioid Receptor Binding in Insular Cortex Is Decreased in Bulimia Nervosa and Correlates Inversely With Fasting Behavior." In the study, eight women with bulimia were compared to healthy women of the same age and weight. Their brains were scanned using positron emission tomography (PET) after injection with the short-acting radioactive compound carfentanil, which binds to mu-opioid receptors in the brain, explained Frost. PET is a powerful medical imaging procedure that noninvasively uses special imaging systems and radioactive tracers to produce pictures of the function and metabolism of the cells in the body. He noted, "We found that mu-opioid receptor binding in bulimic women was lower than in healthy women in the left insular cortex. The insula is involved in processing taste, as well as the anticipation and reward of eating, and has been implicated in studies of other driven behavioral disorders, including drug addiction and gambling.” Copyright © 2005 SNM

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7764 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The figure is famous: a deceptively simple line drawing that at first glance resembles a vase and, at the next, a pair of human faces in profile. When you look at this figure, your brain must rapidly decide what the various lines denote. Are they the outlines of the vase or the borders of two faces? How does your brain decide? It does so in a fraction of a second via special nerve circuits in the brain's visual center that automatically organize information into a "whole" even as an individual's gaze and attention are focused on only one part, according to Johns Hopkins researchers writing in a recent issue of the journal Neuron. "Our paper answers the century-old question of the basis of subconscious processes in visual perception, specifically, the phenomenon of figure-ground organization," said Rudiger von der Heydt, a professor in the Zanvyl Krieger Mind-Brain Institute. "Early in the 20th century, the Gestalt psychologists postulated the existence of mechanisms that process visual information automatically and independently of what we know, think or expect. Since then, there has always been the question as to whether these mechanisms actually exist. They do. Our work suggests that the system continuously organizes the whole scene, even though we usually are attending only to a small part of it."

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 7763 - Posted: 08.10.2005

AFP — Practicing the piano as a young child gives the human brain a musical capacity that is difficult to acquire later in life, Swedish scientists found in a study. It is well-known that most of the world's great pianists were already practicing their scales and arpeggios while still under 10 years old, and the study, published in the Nature Neuroscience journal, shows that this is no coincidence. Childhood is the best time in life to boost the brain's so-called white matter, according to the study, and boost the pyramidal tract, which is a major pathway of the central nervous system, transmitting signals between the brain and the pianist's fingers. Copyright © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7762 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Alison Abbott Regular exercise keeps us fit. But not everyone is born equal: a few people get little benefit from physical activity because their genetic makeup doesn't allow it. Research now shows that the same holds true for the elderly, where the stakes are much higher. A third of adults over 70 in the US are unable to walk for half a kilometre without difficulty, or to climb up ten steps without having to stop for a rest. Such people are four times more likely to end up in a nursing home, and three times likelier to die before those who are fitter. To find out if there is a genetic component in who stays fittest the longest, Stephen Kritchevsky at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and his colleagues conducted a four-year study of 3,000 American adults in their seventies. The team examined participants every six months, and asked them about their mobility and how much exercise they took. At the end, they were surprised by how big a role genetics appears to play in keeping the elderly on their feet. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7761 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By SIMON BARON-COHEN TWO big scientific debates have attracted a lot of attention over the past year. One concerns the causes of autism, while the other addresses differences in scientific aptitude between the sexes. At the risk of adding fuel to both fires, I submit that these two lines of inquiry have a great deal in common. By studying the differences between male and female brains, we can generate significant insights into the mystery of autism. So was Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, right when he remarked that women were innately less suited than men to be top-level scientists? Judging from current research, he was and he wasn't. It's true that scientists have documented psychological and physiological differences between male and female brains. But Mr. Summers was wrong to imply that these differences render any individual woman less capable than any individual man of becoming a top-level scientist. In fact, the differences that show up in brain research reflect averages, meaning that they emerge only when you study groups of males and females and compare the two groups' averages on particular psychological tests or physiological measures. The evidence to date tells us nothing about individuals - which means that if you are a woman, there is no evidence to suggest that you could not become a Nobel laureate in your chosen area of scientific inquiry. A good scientist is a good scientist regardless of sex. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7760 - Posted: 08.10.2005

By BENEDICT CAREY People who have memories of being abducted by aliens become hardened skeptics, of a kind. They dismiss the procession of scientists who explain away the memories as illusions or fantasy. They scoff at talk about hypnosis or the unconscious processing of Hollywood scripts. And they hold their ground amid snickers from a public that thinks that they are daft or psychotic. They are neither, it turns out, and their experiences should be taken as seriously as any strongly held exotic beliefs, according to Susan Clancy, a Harvard psychologist who interviewed dozens of self-described abductees as part of a series of memory studies over the last several years. In her book "Abducted," due in October, Dr. Clancy, a psychologist at Harvard, manages to refute and defend these believers, and along the way provide a discussion of current research into memory, emotion and culture that renders abduction stories understandable, if not believable. Although it focuses on abduction memories, the book hints at a larger ambition, to explain the psychology of transformative experiences, whether supposed abductions, conversions or divine visitations. "Understanding why people believe weird things is important for anyone who wishes to know more about people - that is, humans in general," she writes.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 7759 - Posted: 08.09.2005

Jo Revill, health editor Parents have long battled to persuade their children to master new spellings and learn their tables, but they may be wasting their time. A new study suggests that both maths and reading ability lies largely in the genes. Researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry are trying to unravel how much genes, rather than environmental factors, affect a child's academic prowess. By analysing the test results of 6,000 twins, they were able to see clear genetic factors emerging for both numerical skills and reading ability. They compared test results for seven-year-old identical twins, who share the same DNA, with the results from non-identical twins, who only share 50 per cent of their DNA, to assess how much was down to genes. Yulia Kovas, who led the investigation, said: 'Our work shows that there is a substantial genetic overlap between maths and reading, but also between maths and general intelligence. 'It seems that there is a group of "general" genes that govern our achievements at school. There could be between 50 and 100 different DNA markers involved, and each plays a tiny role.' © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7758 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Review by Jennifer Hansen, Ph.D. on Jul 26th 2005 The best way to read Let Them Eat Prozac is to first consider the events surrounding Healy's writing of the book. He reports to us that he wrote this book and The Creation of Psychopharmacology (2002) during 2000 (2004, 286). The year 2000 turns out to be a pivotal year in Healy's career because of two separate scrapes with what becomes the focus of Let Them Eat Prozac: conflicts of interest between the pharmaceutical industry and academia. First, in late November 2000, Healy travels to the University of Toronto's Department of Psychiatry who invites him to speak for its seventy-fifth anniversary meeting, entitled "Looking Back: Looking Ahead." A year before this trip, The Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has hired Healy as a professor of psychiatry in the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program. Healy has not yet made the move to Canada because he was waiting on his visa. Healy delivers a talk entitled: "Psychopharmacology and the Government," which is basically an outline of The Creation of Psychopharmacology along with the assertion that SSRIs could make people suicidal. This last point is, as I will explain below, the occasion for which Healy pens Let Them Eat Prozac. The chief physician at CAMH, David Goldbloom, hears Healy's talk and reacts quite strongly to the content, particularly--to his mind--the irresponsible and unscientific suggestion that SSRI drugs can lead to suicidality in patients. Shortly after an uncomfortable exchange with Goldbloom, Healy learns via email from Goldbloom that CAMH has decided to withdraw the offer to of a position as Clinical Director of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders program. Healy describes, briefly, these events in chapter 9, "The Plot Thickens" (215-219), however, website dedicated to exposing these events (http://www.pharmapolitics.com) makes public the email exchanges between Goldbloom and Healy, Healy's talk, and subsequent letters written between various players in the scandal that follows. Copyright © CenterSite, LLC, 1995-2005

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 7757 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Anyone who's had to find his or her way through a darkened room can appreciate that nonvisual cues play a large role in our sense of movement. What might be less apparent is that not all such cues come from our remaining four senses. In a finding that broadens our understanding of human movement control, researchers at the Institute of Neurology in London have shown that the inner-ear vestibular organs provide what is essentially an on-line movement guidance system for maintaining the accuracy of whole-body movements. The vestibular organs are commonly thought of as sensors that serve balance, the control of visual gaze, and higher spatial functions, such as navigation. However, because these organs respond to head movements, such as accelerations, they also have the potential to signal the accuracy of any voluntary movement that causes the head to move in space. The brain may then use that information for movement control in the same way that it uses sensory feedback information from the eyes, muscles, and skin to assess and adjust a limb movement as it is being executed. In the new work, appearing in the August 9 issue of Current Biology, Brian Day and Raymond Reynolds of University College London show that the brain uses signals from the vestibular organs to make on-line adjustments to whole-body voluntary movements.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 7756 - Posted: 08.09.2005

SNOWBIRD, UTAH--Many dog owners will be quick to tell you that their beloved canines can understand what their masters are thinking. Though the dogless among us aren't always convinced, new research suggests that dogs do in fact have a rudimentary "theory of mind." Most people understand that others have beliefs, interests, and intentions that are different from their own. Although this so-called theory of mind is critical for our social development and survival, the ability has not been conclusively shown in our close relatives, apes and monkeys. Since studies in other species are scarce, Alexandra Horowitz, an animal cognition researcher at Barnard College in New York City, turned to man's best friend. In humans, social play is considered important in the development of complex thought, problem-solving skills, and even language. So Horowitz videotaped dogs play-fighting in a "natural" setting: a 2.5-acre grassy, off-leash dog park. In the 39 playful interactions Horowitz recorded, a canine hoping to initiate play would first make sure it had its partner's attention. Typical attention getters included barks, play bites, and bumps, which are easy to distinguish from play signals, such as running off while looking back, and exaggerated, loping approaches. Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Evolution; Intelligence
Link ID: 7755 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Smoking is for losers, at least on film. A study of 1990s blockbuster movies has found that onscreen smokers tend to be poor and villainous. But while the habit may have fallen from its previous glamorous status, impressionable adolescents are likely still seduced by the ‘cool’ factor, researchers warn. “In the movie Payback, Mel Gibson's character was low class and a thief. But he was unquestionably the hero of the movie and extremely cool,” says lead author Karan Omidvari at St Michael’s Medical Center in Newark, US. “And teenagers are at the age when it’s good to be bad.” Omidvari and his colleagues recorded the prevalence of smoking in the top five characters from all top 10 US movies released between 1990 and 2000 – a whopping 447 movies. They found that 24% of the leading characters lit up at least once during the movie. The figure is nearly identical to the prevalence of smoking in the general US population. And it was the independent filmmakers – not Hollywood - who really piled on the smoke. R-rated (with adult content) independent movies had about half their characters puffing away. In comparably rated studio films less than a third indulged partook. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7754 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Leslie Knowlton In an attempt to reframe the long-standing debate over the either-or impact of genetics versus environment on emotional makeup, a panel titled "Genes-Environment Interactions: Developmental and Psychotherapeutic Implications" convened at the American Psychoanalytic Association's Winter 2005 Meeting in New York City. Glen O. Gabbard, M.D., Brown Foundation chair of psychoanalysis and professor of psychiatry at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, presented data on the gene-environment interaction in antisocial and borderline personality disorders, showing that DNA is both inherited and environmentally modifiable. Gabbard told Psychiatric Times that there is today, in the field of psychiatry, a simplistic thinking that wants everything reduced to the genome. "Most people do not like complexity, so there's a seductiveness about genetic reductionism," he said. "But genes alone do not determine personality, and we have good data now showing that it is a matter of genes interacting with the environment in the expression of those genes, and the environment making actual changes in that expression." At the meeting, Gabbard described a long-term, follow-up study of 1,037 children in Dunedin, New Zealand--a birth cohort assessed every two years up to age 26 (Caspi et al., 2002). Measures included degree of maltreatment, monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene activity and antisocial behavior. Results showed that males with low MAOA activity who were maltreated in childhood had elevated antisocial scores, whereas males with high MAOA activity did not have the elevated scores even when they had experienced maltreatment. Overall, 85% of the males with both the low MAOA activity genotype and severe maltreatment became antisocial.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 7753 - Posted: 08.09.2005

By Arline Kaplan Although he hated science in high school, Solomon Snyder, M.D., received the nation's highest science honor this year, the National Medal of Science. In the intervening 40+ years, Snyder found that he loved the discovery and creativity of scientific research. In fact, his lab at Johns Hopkins University pioneered the identification of opiate receptors and was the first to identify several novel neurotransmitters. Ironically, it was Snyder's love of music that facilitated his entry into scientific research. "When I was in high school, one thing I did really well was play the classical guitar. I gave concerts and played for Andres Segovia, the great classical guitarist," Snyder told Psychiatric Times. Snyder considered taking master classes with Segovia after high school and then attending a music conservatory. Instead, "after a lot of soul searching," the Washington, D.C., native chose to attend Georgetown University. "In high school, I liked reading about philosophy. My other friends were considering going into engineering or pre-med. I got this idea that psychiatry might be a little like philosophy. Though I hated science, I thought I could stomach it and be pre-med, which I was at Georgetown," he said. © 2005 Psychiatric Times.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Depression
Link ID: 7752 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists say they have been able to monitor people's thoughts via scans of their brains. Teams at University College London and University of California in LA could tell what images people were looking at or what sounds they were listening to. The US team say their study proves brain scans do relate to brain cell electrical activity. The UK team say such research might help paralysed people communicate, using a "thought-reading" computer. In their Current Biology study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, people were shown two different images at the same time - a red stripy pattern in front of the right eye and a blue stripy pattern in front of the left. The volunteers wore special goggles which meant each eye saw only what was put in front of it. In that situation, the brain then switches awareness between both images, sometimes seeing one image and sometimes the other. While people's attention switched between the two images, the researchers used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) brain scanning to monitor activity in the visual cortex. It was found that focusing on the red or the blue patterns led to specific, and noticeably different, patterns of brain activity. The fMRI scans could reliably be used to predict which of the images the volunteer was looking at, the researchers found. The US study, published in Science, took the same theory and applied it to a more everyday example. They used electrodes placed inside the skull to monitor the responses of brain cells in the auditory cortex of two surgical patients as they watched a clip of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". They used this data to accurately predict the fMRI signals from the brains of another 11 healthy patients who watched the clip while lying in a scanner. (C)BBC

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 7751 - Posted: 08.08.2005