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

By Roger Dobson Some turn to yoga or t'ai chi, others swear by red wine. No stone has been left unturned in the age-old pursuit of a long and healthy life. But now medical researchers have concluded that the secret of longevity may lie in nothing more outlandish than what comes naturally to mothers the world over. A good old-fashioned cuddle, say the scientists, can reduce heart disease, cut down stress and promote longevity. The researchers even advise nervous public speakers to indulge in a bit of hugging before they go on stage to face their audience. At the heart of it is a so-called "cuddle hormone", oxytocin, a chemical associated with a range of health benefits, which shows a marked increase in the blood supply after just 10 minutes of warm, supportive touching. The finding might explain why married couples enjoy better health than singletons. Some studies have suggested that divorce, bereavement and social isolation damage health. But what it is about marriage that is protective, and the mechanisms involved, have been unclear. However, the scientists also found that the quality of the hug is crucial - and, for example, the celebrity embrace performed in the glare of flashlights might not count. Instead the cuddle is at its strongest in a warm, supportive relationship. © 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

Keyword: Emotions; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 7750 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The late Stanley Milgram fairly lays claim to be one of the greatest behavioural scientists of the 20th century. He derives his renown from of a series of experiments on obedience to authority, which he conducted at Yale University in 1961-2. Milgram found, surprisingly, that 65% of his subjects, ordinary residents of New Haven, were willing to give apparently harmful electric shocks—up to 450 volts—to a pitifully protesting victim, simply because a scientific, lab coated authority commanded them to, and despite the fact that the victim did nothing to deserve such punishment. The victim was, in reality, a good actor who did not actually receive shocks, a fact that was revealed to the subjects at the end of the experiment. Milgram's interest in the study of obedience partly emerged out of a deep concern with the suffering of fellow Jews at the hands of the Nazis and an attempt to fathom how the Holocaust could have happened. His researches, like Freud's, led to profound revisions in some of the fundamental assumptions about human nature. Milgram's experiments suggested that it was not necessary to invoke "evil" as a concept to explain why so many ordinary people do terrible things. Instead his work, and that of other social psychologists, suggested that much of what we do, we do automatically. Evil often occurs simply because we do not question our acts enough; instead our rationale arises from our trust in authority figures who are in "charge." © 2005 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd

Keyword: Aggression; Emotions
Link ID: 7749 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Cathryn M. Delude Nine years ago the Food and Drug Administration approved tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) as the first, and still only, drug for treating ischemic strokes, which are caused by blood clots in the brain that starve neurons of oxygen. Yet only 3 percent of stroke victims receive this clot-busting thrombolytic, largely because they enter the emergency room within three hours of the onset of symptoms. After that, tPA's effectiveness in reducing death and disability sinks, while the relative risk of dangerous hemorrhaging rises. Recently scientists have discovered ways that could extend tPA's window of time, at least for some patients, and have found alternatives that may be both effective and safe beyond three hours. A key to a bigger tPA window was the realization among researchers that not all neurons deprived of oxygen died after three hours, as was previously assumed. Restoring blood flow can revive enough neurons to significantly improve recovery. The trick is figuring out which patients can still benefit from treatment. From the beginning, doctors used CT scans to triage patients, separating the many with ischemic stroke, who are candidates for tPA, from the few with hemorrhaging stroke, who are not. (About 80 percent of all strokes are ischemic.) But the images could not show how much of the ischemic tissue was already dead and how much was still salvageable. "We were treating patients blindly," remarks Steven Warach of the National Institutes of Health's Stroke Center. "We didn't know what was going on in the brain." © 1996-2005 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 7748 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It's human nature to sometimes regret a decision. Now scientists have identified the brain region that mediates that feeling of remorse: the medial orbitofrontal cortex. Giorgio Coricelli of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences at the National Science Research Center in Bron, France, and his colleagues designed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment to monitor how people make decisions and feel about them after the fact. The team presented volunteers with two choices, one of which carried higher risk than the other, but had the potential for greater reward as well. After indicating their choices, the subjects were told the outcome of their decision. In some cases, however, the researchers also revealed what would have happened if they had chosen differently. Choosing the less lucrative option and learning the other one was better was strongly correlated with activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, which sits above the orbits of the eyes in the brain's frontal lobe. The amount of activity observed was also tied to the level of regret, which corresponded to the difference between the result of the choice made and that of the alternative outcome When participants were assigned one of two possibilities and thus felt no control over the outcomes, this activity was not observed, suggesting a feeling of personal responsibility helps govern OFC activity in addition to feelings of regret. © 1996-2005 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 7747 - Posted: 06.24.2010

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Oregon Health & Science University researchers have identified some of the key factors that prevent the repair of brain damage caused by multiple sclerosis (MS), complications of premature birth, and other diseases and conditions. The findings offer important clues about why the nervous system fails to repair itself and suggest ways that at least some forms of brain damage could be reversed. The research is published in the August edition of the scientific journal Nature Medicine. "For many years, scientists have understood that damage to the insulation-like sheath surrounding nerve cells in the brain, called myelin, is part of the disease process for MS and other brain disorders," said Larry Sherman, Ph.D., an associate scientist in the Division of Neuroscience at the Oregon National Primate Research Center and an adjunct associate professor of cell and developmental biology in the OHSU School of Medicine. "In recent years, it became clear that there were cells at the sites of this damage that should have the capacity to repair the brain and spinal cord but they fail to do so. Our studies have revealed that there is a particular signal in the damaged brain that prevents these cells from restoring lost myelin. We're hopeful that we can develop methods to counteract this process in animal models in our search for human treatments."

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 7746 - Posted: 08.08.2005

Feeling depressed and fatigued does not increase a person's risk for cancer, according to a new study. Severely exhausted people, however, do engage in behavior that is associated with a higher cancer risk. The study, published in the September 15, 2005 issue of CANCER (http:/www.interscience.wiley.com/cancer-newsroom), a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, is the first prospective study using the "vital exhaustion" questionnaire to investigate this link. The concept of vital exhaustion – described as feelings of excessive fatigue and lack of energy, increased irritability and a feeling of demoralization – grew out of the field of cardiology. Studies have identified vital exhaustion as a risk factor for heart attacks and death from a heart attack. Depressive mood has also been widely blamed, at least in lay literature, as a risk factor for cancer. However, the scientific data is much more inconsistent than that for heart attacks. Two recent prospective studies failed to identify a link between depression and cancer. Corinna Bergelt, Ph.D. of the Danish Cancer Society's Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen and colleagues followed 8527 people aged 21–94 years to investigate whether depressive feelings and exhaustion were risk factors for cancer, looking at all cancers combined, smoking-related cancers, alcohol-related cancers, virus and immune-related cancers, and hormone-related cancers.

Keyword: Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 7745 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Dying in your sleep may not be as peaceful an experience as is popularly supposed, new research suggests. Scientists believe death occurring during sleep often happens because a person stops breathing. When elderly but otherwise healthy people die suddenly during sleep, doctors usually put it down to heart failure. But tests on rats suggest a different cause. Death is more likely to be due to the failure of a breathing "command centre" in the brain. Researchers focused on a brainstem region called the preBotzinger complex (preBotC) which contains specialised neurons that trigger breathing. Rats were injected with a chemical designed to target and kill more than half the preBotC neurons. The results were dramatic. Breathing stopped completely when the rats entered REM sleep - the mentally active phase of sleep characterised by dreaming - forcing the animals to wake up. Over time, the breathing lapses increased in severity and spread into non-REM, deeper sleep. Eventually they occurred when the rats were awake as well. The US scientists believe the findings, reported in the online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, are relevant to humans. Mammalian brains are all organised in a similar fashion. Rats have about 600 of the specialised preBotC cells, and humans are thought to have a few thousand. The cells are lost as part of the ageing process, and not renewed. ©2005 Associated Newspapers Ltd ·

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 7744 - Posted: 06.24.2010

St. Paul, Minn. – Fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome can be difficult to diagnose and should have guidelines for diagnostic testing, according to a study in the July 26 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. A second study found chemotherapy aggravated symptoms in one woman’s case. Fragile X syndrome is the most common inherited cause of mental retardation. Fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS) was recently defined as a disorder that affects carriers of the Fragile X gene, called FMR1. People with FXTAS carry the FMR1 gene and develop symptoms later in life, usually starting in their 60s and 70s. Ataxia is the inability to coordinate voluntary muscle movements. Predominantly occurring in males, FXTAS could affect as many as one in 3,000 men over age 50. Male carriers pass the gene to all daughters but none of their sons. Female carriers have a 50 percent chance of passing the gene to each child. A multi-center study found 56 people had received 98 prior diagnoses, including parkinsonism and essential tremor, before FXTAS was concluded. The researchers believe this was partly due to the recent definition of FXTAS and a lack of familiarity with the disorder. The information about previous diagnoses encouraged them to develop guidelines for diagnostic testing for FXTAS.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7743 - Posted: 06.24.2010

There's probably not a smoker out there who won't tell you the same thing: Don't try it. That's because despite years of repeated messages in public service campaigns — smoking is a health risk — many who start find it hard to stop. A new study that uses PET scanning and a tracer chemical that binds to an enzyme, called monamine oxidase (MAO), is helping researchers track MAO in smokers and non-smokers. The findings may explain why smokers ramp up their cigarette intake over time and could offer a new tool for those struggling to quit. "The non-smoker clears these tracers, which are actually the tools we use to measure monoamine oxidase… very, very rapidly," explains Brookhaven National Laboratory chemist Joanna Fowler, who led the study. "The smoker clears these tracers much more slowly than the non-smoker." The enzyme is crucial to blood pressure and mood regulation and has two subtypes — MAO A and B. Initially Fowler tracked only MAO B. As reported in Discover Magazine, that study showed that levels of MAO B in smokers' peripheral organs — the heart, kidneys, spleen and lungs — were reduced by 40 to 50 percent compared to non-smokers. "But we do not think that... the degree to which monoamine oxidase is inhibited in peripheral organs will be detrimental to the smoker," says Fowler. © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7742 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Unlike people, fish can regrow damaged nerve fibers in their central nervous systems. Now a study may have found the reason: The creatures lack a protein called Nogo-A that prevents nerve regeneration in mammals. Axons, or nerve fibers, are the transmission lines that conduct electrical signals throughout the body. The fibers are protected by sheaths of myelin, a fatty insulator that speeds the electrical impulses along. Damaged axons in the brain and spinal cord of mammals don't regenerate, and spinal cord injuries can therefore lead to permanent paralysis. Fish are luckier: They can regrow the axons in their central nervous system, but curiously this regeneration stops if their nerve endings come into contact with mammalian myelin. Because a protein in mammalian myelin called Nogo-A is known to inhibit central nervous system axon growth in mammals, a team of researchers led by biologist Claudia Stürmer at the University of Konstanz in Germany wondered if fish might be missing this protein. When the researchers exposed goldfish axons to rat Nogo-A, the nerves stopped growing. Furthermore, a comparison of genomes between ten species of fish, including zebrafish and pufferfish, and humans revealed that fish lack the genetic information to make Nogo-A or a similar inhibitor. The team reports its findings in the August issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. The paper's careful study of fish phylogeny supports an existing notion that Nogo-A may be a recent evolutionary development that correlates with more complex nervous systems and more complex functions, says Stephen Strittmatter, a neurologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. "It's an important addition to our growing understanding of the role these inhibitors play," he says. --CAROLYN GRAMLING Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Regeneration; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7741 - Posted: 06.24.2010