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

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Scientists have taught dolphins to combine both rhythm and vocalizations to produce music, which has resulted in an extremely high-pitched, short version of the "Batman" theme song. The findings, outlined in two studies, represent the first time that nonhuman mammals have demonstrated that they can recognize rhythms and reproduce them vocally. "Humans are sensitive to rhythms embedded in sequences of sounds, but we typically consider this skill to be part of processing for language and music, cognitive domains that we consider to be uniquely human," said Heidi Harley, lead author of both studies. "Clearly, aspects of those domains are available to other species." The studies 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. Harley, who is associate professor of social sciences at the New College of Florida in Sarasota, told Discovery News that both studies tested dolphins at The Living Seas exhibit at the Disney World Resort's Epcot Center in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Hearing; Evolution
Link ID: 7970 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Michael Hopkin Gorillas have been spotted using tools in the wild for the first time, after decades of observation. Researchers in the Congolese jungle saw one of the great apes using a branch to test the depth of a pond, and another using the trunk of a small shrub as an improvised bridge. Unlike chimpanzees, which use a range of tricks to get food, gorillas rely more on size and strength: they shell nuts with their teeth, or smash open termite mounds with their fists. But not needing tools to get food does not mean that gorillas aren't smart enough to use them. Captive western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) are known to use tools in captivity, for example. And mountain gorillas (G. beringei) use a variety of different techniques which, although not involving tools, are clever ways of stripping leaves from hard-to-reach plants. The new observations show that western gorillas have the mental wherewithal to use tools to solve other problems too, such as navigating through an ominously deep-looking pond, says Thomas Breuer of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, and a member of the team that spotted the innovative behaviour. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 7969 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY The popular antidepressant Paxil may increase the risk of birth defects if pregnant women take it during the first trimester, federal health officials announced late Tuesday. The Food and Drug Administration posted the warning on its Web site after the drug's manufacturer, the British company GlaxoSmithKline, sent the agency and doctors a letter that cited evidence from a new study. Glaxo said in the letter that it had changed the drug's label to reflect the possibility of the increased risk. Some doctors who read the letter said it was not clear whether the F.D.A.'s warning was necessary. The Glaxo study was an analysis of medical records from a managed care company, and did not provide convincing evidence that it was the drug, and not some other factor, that was responsible for the increased risk, they said. "Typically in studies like this you can't control for other things that could have contributed to the increased rate of defects, like the severity of the mother's depression," said Dr. Timothy Oberlander, a developmental pediatrician at the University of British Columbia and BC Children's Hospital in Vancouver. The F.D.A. is reviewing the study, said Susan Cruzan, a spokeswoman for the agency. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7968 - Posted: 09.29.2005

We all age, it's a fact of life, like death and taxes, and there's nothing we can do about it. But, how is it possible that of two middle-aged mice, one is already grey, balding and frail? Researchers have discovered that genetic mutations in the powerhouses of our cells — mitochondria — appear to trigger cells to die and speed up the aging process. Inducing these kinds of mitochondrial mutations leads to premature aging in mice, which live only about half as long as normal mice. Geneticist Tom Prolla and his group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison created the fast-aging mice by altering just two of the thousands of letters, or bases, of the mouse DNA code. That changed a gene, called polymerase gamma, in the energy-producing mitochondria. "This gene basically functions as a spellchecker during the copying of mitochondrial DNA," he explains. "So we altered two bases in the gene and made it defective, so that it… can no longer function as a spell-checker. So as a result of that the mitochondrial DNA accumulates mutations." At first the mice looked normal, but around eight or nine months of age the researchers began to notice differences. "We started seeing a lot of aging symptoms in them, such as hair loss, greying, loss of bone mass, loss of muscle mass, problems in the spinal curvature," Prolla says. "The equivalent age for a human would be 30 years old when they show a lot of these aging symptoms, so they really age very fast." © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 7967 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Betsy Leohner does not live in constant fear, but in the back of her mind, she is worried she will loose her mind. Her mother died of Alzheimer's disease at 83, and now her sister has been diagnosed with the disease. "It isn't something I worry about everyday, but when I forget something, I think oh, is this it," says Leohner who is 67, but looks much younger and has yet to show any symptoms of the disease. There is no way of predicting whether Leohner will ultimately develop Alzheimer's, but brain researchers based in New York and Florida have made an intriguing finding that may set people like Leohner at ease. Scientists led by Albert Einstein College of Medicine microbiologist Luciano D'Adamio found a gene that may control the production of beta amyloid plaques — protein deposits that collect along the outer borders of brain cells in some Alzheimer's patients, and which are thought to be associated with the disease's symptoms. The gene is called BRI2 (BREE-TWO). Previous research has shown that in two rare types of inherited dementia, known as British Dementia and Danish Dementia and which are akin to Alzheimer's disease, the gene is mutated and there are subsequently increased amounts of beta amyloid plaques. It is not known whether these plaques are themselves a cause of the three diseases or simply a consequence of them. It is also doubtful BRI2 is the only gene controlling plaque production, but the researchers hope that by understanding one way they are produced, they may ultimately be able to develop drugs that could prevent the diseases or at least slow their symptoms. © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 7966 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Alcoholics who smoke appear to lose more brain mass than alcoholics who don't smoke, according to a study at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. It is already well-known that the brains of long-term alcoholics atrophy and shrink, the study authors say, but the new findings are the first evidence that cigarette smoking might contribute to that atrophy, particularly in grey matter of the parietal and temporal lobes. Fifty to 90 percent of alcoholics also are smokers, according to Dieter Meyerhoff, PhD, a radiology researcher at SFVAMC and the principal investigator of the study "Just looking at the amount of tissue mass lost due to either drinking or smoking, alcoholics who smoke show a greater loss in some regions of the brain compared to alcoholics who don't smoke," says Meyerhoff, who also is a professor of radiology at the University of California, San Francisco. The study, which was published in the August 2005 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, compared 37 recovering alcoholics between the ages of 26 and 66 with a control group of 30 healthy light drinkers. The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging, a safe, non-invasive imaging technique, to measure brain volumes of the study participants. They discovered that the more severe the tobacco habit, the greater the brain injury. "In smoking alcohol-dependent individuals, smaller regional [brain] volumes are related to greater cigarette-smoking severity," according to the study findings, with severity measured by level of nicotine dependence, cigarettes smoked per day, and years of smoking.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7965 - Posted: 09.29.2005

Medication should not be readily dished out to children and young people with depression, say experts. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has ruled drugs should be considered only in moderate or severe cases. The NHS drug watchdog said young people should first be offered a course of psychological therapy lasting for at least three months. Campaigners say this is not happening as therapists are in short supply. Research by the charity Sane found over 80% of young people with depression are given medication and only 6% any form of psychiatric therapy. The NICE guidance stressed drugs should only be offered in tandem with, and not instead of, therapy. Most of a class of anti-depressants called SSRIs have already been barred from use in young people in the UK over concerns of a heightened risk of suicide. NICE also warned many young people with depression are not being diagnosed - putting them at increased risk of self-harm and suicide. It said healthcare professionals in primary care, schools and other relevant community settings should be trained to detect symptoms of depression, and to assess children and young people who may be at risk. And the guidance emphasised that in some cases parents' psychiatric problems need to be treated in parallel if a young person's mental health is to improve. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7964 - Posted: 09.28.2005