Drug abusers are increasingly turning to a slow-release form of a powerful painkiller for a quick and dangerous high, University of Florida researchers warn. The trend is raising alarm as the number of people dying from an overdose of the drug fentanyl, an opioid 100 times more potent than morphine, rises. Addicts are misusing a clear patch that transfers a controlled dose of fentanyl through the skin into the bloodstream over the course of a few days, UF experts say. The adhesive patch is typically prescribed to treat postoperative pain or chronic pain conditions, but in some cases is being misused, often with deadly consequences. "Because the patch is a sustained release form of the drug, if one withdraws the 72 hours' worth of drug and uses it in a form that it wasn't designed to be used for, then it can rapidly result in death," said the study's lead researcher, Bruce Goldberger, Ph.D., director of toxicology and an associate professor in the departments of pathology, immunology and laboratory medicine and psychiatry in UF's College of Medicine. Patients who are prescribed the patch must be made aware of the potential dangers of misuse, Goldberger added. Florida Department of Law Enforcement records cited in the UF study, presented this month in Orlando at the annual meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, show abuse of the patch resulted in the death of 115 people in Florida last year.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 7579 - Posted: 07.01.2005

ANN ARBOR, MI -- Several years ago, University of Michigan researchers published some of the strongest evidence yet that children who snore when they sleep are far more likely to have attention and hyperactivity problems than their non-snoring peers. Today, that link takes on a new long-term dimension with the publication in the journal Sleep of follow-up data from some of the same children who took part in the earlier study. Indeed, children in the original study who snored regularly, in comparison to those who did not, were about four times more likely to have developed new hyperactivity by the time the U-M team contacted their families four years later. In other words, snoring early in life predicted new or worsened behavior problems four years later. Similar behavior was seen among children who had had other symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea, in which repeated pauses in breathing disrupt sleep and can reduce blood oxygen levels. For example, children with daytime sleepiness in the original study were also more likely to have developed hyperactivity four years later. The findings held true even after the researchers took into account which children already had been identified as hyperactive during the first study, and which ones were taking prescription behavior medicines during the follow-up survey. In fact says lead author and U-M sleep researcher Ronald D. Chervin, M.D., M.S., inattention and hyperactivity at follow-up were usually predicted better by snoring and other sleep apnea symptoms four years earlier than by those same symptoms at follow-up.

Keyword: Sleep; ADHD
Link ID: 7578 - Posted: 07.01.2005

NEW YORK - Brooke Shields took aim at Tom Cruise's "Today" show diatribe against antidepressants, saying the drugs helped her survive feelings of hopelessness after the birth of her first child. In an op-ed piece published Friday in The New York Times, Shields criticized what she called Cruise's "ridiculous rant." Cruise had criticized the actress for taking the drugs, and became particularly passionate about the issue in an interview on "Today" last week. "You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do," Cruise told Matt Lauer. He went on to say there was no such thing as chemical imbalances that need to be corrected with drugs, and that depression could be treated with exercise and vitamins. "I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression," Shields wrote. She added that Cruise's comments "are a disservice to mothers everywhere. To suggest that I was wrong to take drugs to deal with my depression, and that instead I should have taken vitamins and exercised shows an utter lack of understanding about postpartum depression and childbirth in general." Shields said she considered swallowing a bottle of pills or jumping out the window at the lowest point of her depression following the birth of her daughter, Rowan Francis, in 2003. A doctor later attributed her feelings to a plunge in her estrogen and progesterone levels and prescribed the antidepressant Paxil. Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. Copyright © 2005 Yahoo!

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 7577 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Marc Kaufman, Washington Post Staff Writer More than 13 months before a scientific journal reported that Viagra had been linked to a rare form of blindness in some men, a Food and Drug Administration safety officer made the same observation from monitoring adverse event reports and told her supervisors that doctors and patients should be warned of the findings. Her recommendation was well received, she told congressional investigators, but nothing happened. The FDA issued no public notice or proposed changes to the Viagra label. That came only following widespread publicity last month about the journal article and public concerns about the possible blindness-Viagra link. The safety officer's experience was outlined in a letter last week to FDA Acting Commissioner Lester M. Crawford from Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who said the agency had moved far too slowly on an emerging safety concern. Criticism of the FDA's response to potentially harmful drug side effects has been frequent and sharp since Merck & Co. took its popular arthritis painkiller, Vioxx, off the market last fall after studies indicated that it increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes. The FDA has sought to tighten its drug safety oversight since then, but some critics say the agency is doing too little and still puts more emphasis on reviewing and approving new drugs than on safety concerns. "I am troubled by the FDA's action, or lack thereof, relating to the updating of Viagra's product label," Grassley wrote. He said the agency's Office of New Drugs (OND) had done nothing "despite OND's knowledge of the blindness risks since January 2004 and general agreement among FDA staff last spring that the label should be updated." © 2005 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Vision
Link ID: 7576 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Montreal, A study published today in the prestigious journal Nature by Dr. Michael Petrides and colleagues at the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) at McGill University, challenges current thinking that speech developed as a result of new structures that evolved in the human brain. Dr. Petrides and colleagues have identified a distinct brain region that controls jaw movements in macaque monkeys that is comparable to Broca’s area - the region in the human brain critical for speech production. This discovery is important as it suggests that this area of the brain evolved originally to perform high-order control over the mouth and the jaw, and that as humans evolved this area came to control the movements necessary for speech. “Our study shows that nonlinguistic monkeys possess an area comparable to Broca’s area – it is located in the same region and has the same anatomical characteristics as Broca’s area in the human brain“, explained Dr. Michael Petrides, Coordinator of the Cognitive Neuroscience Unit at the MNI and Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University. "The researchers performed quantitative microscopic analysis of the cytoarchitecture of the region of interest and electrophysiological stimulation and recording within this region. When this area in the monkey was electrically stimulated, oral and facial motor responses were evoked – such as jaw movement sequences, as well as respiratory responses. In addition, Broca’s area is connected with a region of the brain immediately in front of it that is involved in the retrieval of information from memory.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 7575 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It isn't uncommon for us to pop open a bottle of Champagne on a happy occasion or break out a beer when watching our favorite team play an important game. Alcohol has been a part of our celebrations for over 10,000 years. Side by side however, alcohol abuse has also been around, with references to it in ancient Egyptian writings and the Old Testament. Up until the 18th century, drunkenness was believed to be a result of weak will power, not thought of as an illness. But today, with growing evidence of its ill effects, excessive drinking has been deemed a disease. Magnus Huss, a Swedish researcher, coined the term alcoholism in the mid 19th century. When scientists began to think of ways to deal with such strong addictions they turned to a basic question — what makes people get hooked on alcohol? Researchers found that alcohol increases the amount of certain brain chemicals including dopamine, often associated with pleasure and addiction. These chemicals impact us by attaching to proteins called receptors, creating what is often referred to "reward circuit," sending out the pleasure signals. Dopamine has five receptors in the brain, of which the D2 receptor has an established role in alcoholism. Neuroscientist Panayotis Thanos of Brookhaven National Laboratory has now added another of its receptors, D3, to the band of culprits in this disease. A new drug that blocks D3 without affecting any of the other receptors, allowed the researchers "for the very first time," says Thanos, "to look at specifically the dopamine D3 receptor and its role in alcohol abuse." He hypothesized that "treating with this drug would also lead to decrease of alcohol drinking." © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7574 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Fire ants have just added a new twist to the battle of the sexes. New research shows that, in one species, males and females clone themselves, creating entirely separate male and female gene pools. Many social insects utilize different breeding strategies to produce males and females. Female ants, for example, hatch from fertilized eggs, so, like us, they get genes from both mom and dad. But male ants arise from unfertilized eggs, meaning they only get one set of genes--their mother's. Still, males aren't clones of their mothers because the mothers only contribute half of their own genetic material to their sons. Mom's genes came from grandma and grandpa, and the males can get various combinations of either set. But not all ants reproduce this way, according to the new study. While investigating Wasmannia auropunctata, or "little fire ant," colonies in French Guiana and New Caledonia, a research team led by evolutionary ecologist Denis Fournier of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and population geneticist Arnaud Estoup of the National Agricultural Research Institute in Montferrier, France, discovered an unusual genetic pattern: The males and females were cloning themselves. Genetic testing indicated that, contrary to other ants, queen W. auropunctatas arise from unfertilized eggs. As a result, they get both sets of genes from their mom and are thus exact copies of their mothers. Such a strategy could mean males have no chance to pass on their genes to future generations. But dads fight back. When they mate with queens, they somehow eliminate the maternal genetic contribution in the fertilized eggs that give rise to W. auropunctata males. Because the males are getting their only set of genes from their fathers, they, like the queens, are clones of their parent. Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 7573 - Posted: 06.24.2010

First, it is important to appreciate the history of autism and how autism has been diagnosed suggest authors Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Michelle Dawson, and H. Hill Goldsmith. The diagnosis was first coined in the 1940s, but it was not added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) until 1980, and the DSM diagnostic criteria have changed over the years. For example, the 1980 criteria required that an individual have "a pervasive lack of responsiveness to other people;" in contrast, the current 1994 criteria require that an individual demonstrate only "a lack of spontaneous seeking to share achievements with other people" and peer relationships less sophisticated than would be predicted by the individual's developmental level. As another example, the 1980 criterion of "gross deficits in language development" was replaced by the 1994 criterion of difficulty "sustain[ing] a conversation." One purpose of the report is to make the public aware of these less restrictive diagnostic criteria. Second, although a California study claimed to show that these diagnostic expansions didn't contribute to the increased number of diagnosed California cases from the 1980s to the 1990s, the authors of the Current Directions in Psychological Science article identified a serious flaw in the unpublished California study's reasoning. Finally, according to the authors, a third reason not to believe in an autism epidemic involves the U.S., Department of Education's annual "child count" data, which are used as supportive evidence of an autism epidemic. What some people fail to realize is that the Department of Education didn't even have a reporting category for autism until the 1991-1992 school year. Therefore, dramatic increases in the number of children served in the public schools under this reporting category would have been expected throughout the 1990s. The authors propose that the "child count" numbers will most likely continue because they still don't match the numbers reported in recent surveys that use more rigorous epidemiological methods.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 7572 - Posted: 06.30.2005

Michael Hopkin It takes brains to make it through the winter, at least if you're a bird. A new survey suggests that bird species that have evolved to fly south for the coldest months tend to be those that weren't smart enough to survive if they stayed put. The study shows that migratory birds, which leave temperate regions in search of warmer climes when temperatures start to dip, have smaller brains than those who stay behind. Non-migrating species also show more creativity when it comes to finding a meal in the frugal winter months. Daniel Sol of the Independent University of Barcelona in Spain and his colleagues used previous observations of 134 bird species in Europe, Scandinavia and western Russia. They collected data on brain size, and also counted the number of times researchers had spotted the birds adopting a novel feeding technique. Species that remain resident during the winter have adopted more feeding innovations, the team reports in a paper published online by Proceedings of the Royal Society1. The blackbird, Turdus merula, for example, has been seen using twigs to clear snow away while foraging. And the bullfinch, Pyrrhula pyrrhula, has been spotted tearing flesh from chicken and duck carcasses to get a meal. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Intelligence; Animal Migration
Link ID: 7571 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Newborn dolphins and killer whales do not sleep for a whole month after birth, new research has revealed, and neither do their mothers, who stay awake to keep a close eye on their offspring. The feat of wakefulness is remarkable given that rats die if forcibly denied sleep. And in humans, as any new parent will tell you, sleep deprivation is an exquisite form of torture. The surprising sleeping patterns of captive killer whales - Orcinus orca - and bottlenose dolphins - Tursiops truncates - in the early months of life were observed by a team led by Jerome Siegel of the University of California at Los Angeles, US. Unlike all animals previously studied, which maximise rest and sleep after birth to optimise healthy growth and development, the cetaceans actively avoided shut-eye. “The idea that sleep is essential for development of the brain and body is certainly challenged,” says Siegel. The patterns observed contrast with that seen in adult cetaceans, which normally “sleep” for 5 to 8 hours a day - either floating at the surface or lying on the bottom before rising periodically for air. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7570 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Girls with autism may not be identified because they do not show traditional signs of the disorder, an expert warns. Children with autistic spectrum disorders have poor social and communication skills. Hyperactivity, and interests in technical hobbies have been seen as characteristics of the disorder. But Christopher Gillberg, of the National Centre of Autism Studies, said girls were often passive and collected information on people, not things. Around 535,000 people in the UK are estimated to have autistic spectrum disorders. The number of boys diagnosed is much greater than the number of girls, but Professor Gillberg said the difference in incidence may not be as great as currently thought. His theory is partly influenced by studies which did not find what they were expected to. Researchers had looked at the male X chromosome, to see if genetic faults there could influence a boy's risk of developing the condition. But no conclusive link has been found. Professor Gillberg said: "Scientists had been very surprised that, so far, so little has come out of research into the X chromosome. But it may be that girls present differently to boys. The number of females with autism spectrum disorders may be under-diagnosed." He said studies, including one his team had carried out into women with anorexia who were also autistic, as well as his own clinical practice, had shown the gender difference. He added: "Autism may be behind many cases of anorexia. A girl may be withdrawn and uncommunicative, without attracting attention, but when she develops a calorie fixation it becomes a serious problem." (C)BBC

Keyword: Autism; Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 7569 - Posted: 06.29.2005

"Everyone's a little bit racist," proclaims a muppet-like puppet in the hit Broadway musical Avenue Q — something most of us would probably deny. But, as it turns out, unconscious negative associations with race may be hiding inside our brains. When we least suspect it, hidden prejudices can pop up. "There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery, and then look around and see it's somebody white and feel relieved. How humiliating," explained civil rights and political activist Reverend Jesse Jackson in an interview in November, 1993. In recent years, brain researchers discovered that the almond-shaped amygdala, located in the brain's temporal lobes beneath the temples — which have been linked to both fear and pleasure responses and are believed to play a key role in emotions — are associated with a measure of unconscious race bias, especially when a person responds to faces presented subliminally. "White Americans tend to show greater activity in the amygdala when they're looking at African-American faces compared to when they're looking at Caucasian American faces," explains UCLA psychologist Mathew Lieberman."Another thing that the amygdala have been consistently associated with is responding to novel things in the environment, which could be inherently threatening until you figure out what that thing is." But what Lieberman and his research team have found is African Americans, like Jackson, have similar emotional brain activity to Caucasian Americans when seeing photos of other African Americans. Both ethnic groups viewing African American faces display extremely similar changes in the activity of brain structures that respond to emotional events. © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Attention; Emotions
Link ID: 7568 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Durham, N.C. – Not all smokers are alike when it comes to cravings, and a new study conducted by researchers at Duke University Medical Center suggests the difference may lie in their brains' sensitivity to drug cues. The researchers found that smokers who report a greater urge to smoke after a period of abstinence also exhibit stronger brain activity after viewing smoking-related images, such as others smoking or a pack of cigarettes. Smokers who noted fewer cravings showed stable brain responses to the same drug cues, despite hours of deprivation. The findings suggest important differences among smokers in brain responses that underlie the smoking habit, the researchers said. What's more, they added, such brain scans may yield diagnostic tests for predicting which smokers will benefit most from particular quitting methods. The team reported its results in an article in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology that is now online and which will be published in print in a forthcoming issue. The research was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "Our results suggest that not all smokers are the same; they don't all respond to drug cues in the same way," said Joe McClernon, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist at the Duke Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research and lead author of the study. "Furthermore, how they respond depends on the degree to which deprivation leads them to crave cigarettes. © 2001-2005 Duke University Medical Center.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7567 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — The swing of golfer Tiger Woods or the hand movements of cellist Yo-Yo Ma seem effortless, in part, because their brain patterns permanently are organized to handle activities associated with golf and music, suggests a new study. The research, presented at the recent meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping in Toronto, reveals that the extensive practice of musicians, and likely that of athletes and other physically skilled individuals, can change their brains as well as their bodies. The changes can be permanent, even if the person stops practicing or playing. "The brain is dynamic, and is changing constantly in response to external stimuli," said Steven Small, who led the study. "Thus, I would suspect that there are some permanent changes that will not revert, but also, that there would be some additional changes based on the new experiences of the person." Small and his colleagues tested eight expert amateur violinists and eight non-musicians, all right-handed, on their ability to use specific fingers from each hand, including the thumbs, to press a violin string located on a fingerboard placed in their laps. Copyright © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 7566 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Size doesn't matter, at least not the size of the eyespots on a male butterfly's wings when female butterflies consider potential mates. Instead, females are attracted to the "sparkle" created by the ultraviolet reflectivity of the pupils, the white circles at the center of eyespots, according to new research from University at Buffalo biologists. The research, to be published online June 29 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, overturns previous work indicating that larger eyespots might be considered more desirable by female butterflies. The purpose of the research was to explore some of the evolutionary reasons behind butterfly wing patterns in the African satyrid butterfly, Bicyclus anynana. The findings were surprising in the context of the natural world, where dramatic colors and physical features often win the sexual-selection game, according to the UB researchers. "This is one of the first studies to show that such a small pattern element really matters in female choice," said Antonia Monteiro, Ph.D. a co-author on the paper and UB assistant professor of biological sciences. "We always think of something huge or ornamental as determining sexual choice," noted Kendra Robertson, co-author, who recently received her master's degree from the Department of Biological Sciences in the UB College of Arts and Sciences. In a series of carefully controlled tests on both the dorsal and ventral sides of wings, Robertson induced a dozen subtle variations in the eyespot size and pattern of males and then studied how they influenced female's mating decisions.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 7565 - Posted: 06.29.2005

The intersection of genetics and neuroscience may hold the key to autism, says a leading UK researcher. By twinning the Autism Genome Project with brain imaging studies, it may finally be possible to reach an understanding of the complex and highly variable disorder. “What we are trying to do is identify the function of genes and how they affect the way the individuals process information and the structure of the brain. This is the future of research in this area,” said Simon Baron-Cohen, of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, UK, at a press conference in London. Twin studies have revealed that genetics lie at the heart of autism – a spectrum of social and cognitive disorders estimated to affect some 535,000 people in the UK. But despite the consensus on the importance of genetic factors, researchers have had limited success in identifying target genes. “Autism involves multiple genes inherited in different combinations,” says Anthony Monaco, at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford, UK, and a lead researcher in the Autism Genome Project. “It is this complexity that has made the identification of autism susceptibility genes such a challenge.” So Monaco, along with 170 other researchers, is pooling data from families around the world to conduct a genome-wide scan for autism-linked chromosome regions. The team is investigating 1500 families, each with at least two autistic children. Previous studies with just a few hundred families have reported linkages on chromosomes 2, 7, 16 and 17. The Autism Genome Project is expected to produce a broad picture of the chromosome regions involved by the end of 2005. The authors will then turn to 2000 other families with just one autistic child in an effort to uncover the specific genes within those regions. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7564 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Fitting patients with a brain pacemaker could switch off hard-to-treat depression, believe UK experts. The technology, already used to treat Parkinson's disease, uses wires and a battery source to stimulate deep parts of the brain with electric currents. As well as helping depressed patients who have failed on all other therapies, it might also be helpful for treating obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). UK neurologists said they planned to test this after promising US trials. Experts at Bristol University and the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Welwyn Garden City are currently looking to recruiting patients with OCD to take part in a trial that will start later in the year. This builds on the work of Professor Helen Mayberg, from Emory University School of Medicine in the US, who first began studying the use of deep brain stimulation for depression 15 years ago. By looking at brain scans of people with severe depression that could not be alleviated with drugs, psychotherapy or other available treatments, she found they tended to have very high activity in an area of the brain within the limbic system, which is known to be involved with mood. These people also had lower than normal activity in the frontal lobe, which appeared to be linked to the abnormally high activity in the part of the limbic system that Professor Mayberg calls area 25. She reasoned that stimulating area 25 with electric currents would rebalance brain activity and alleviate depression. The device that she used consists of a matchbox-sized, battery-powered generator that sits in the chest, much like a heart pacemaker, and produces the electric currents. The currents are relayed to the desired area deep in the brain via tiny wires, channelled under the skin on either side of the neck. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 7563 - Posted: 06.28.2005

PORTLAND, Ore. – Oregon Health & Science University researchers have measured genetic changes reflecting a drop in the body's ability to suppress inflammatory cells that attack nerve fibers and promote progression of multiple sclerosis. In a study published in the July issue of the Journal of Neuroscience Research, OHSU scientists, in collaboration with The Immune Response Corp. of Carlsbad, Calif., found that MS patients have lower expression of the FOXP3 gene found in a subset of T-cells that may regulate defense against MS and other autoimmune diseases, such as diabetes and arthritis. They say that when FOXP3 is reduced due to abnormalities in its expression, the suppressive activity of regulatory T-cells, or T-regs, also plummets. "This is an important marker," said Arthur Vandenbark, Ph.D., professor of neurology and molecular microbiology and immunology, OHSU School of Medicine, and senior research career scientist at the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center. "This is the first publication that links FOXP3 with reduced suppression in MS." But there may be a solution to the FOXP3 loss. NeuroVax, a T-cell receptor peptide vaccine co-discovered by Vandenbark and colleagues at The Immune Response Corp., was shown in a separate study to increase FOXP3 expression levels among MS patients receiving injections of the drug for a year. "When we vaccinate with the T-cell receptor peptides – the NeuroVax – we can restore the FOXP3 levels," said Vandenbark, who presented the results of the NeuroVax and Journal of Neuroscience Research studies to the European Neurological Society this week in Vienna. "So not only have we identified the marker to show that there are fewer of these T-reg cells present in MS patients, but we're providing a solution for correcting the problem, at least in some patients."

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 7562 - Posted: 06.24.2010

For the second year in a row, the House of Representatives has voted to cancel two federally funded psychology grants. A last-minute amendment to a spending bill, passed Friday, bars the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from giving any money in 2006 to the projects, one a study of marriage and the other an investigation of visual perception in pigeons. The amendment was offered by Representative Randy Neugebauer (R-TX), who last year won a similar victory in the House, involving two other grants, that was later overturned by the Senate (Science, 17 September 2004, p. 1688). Neugebauer says he is correcting skewed priorities at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), in particular, the institute's "fail[ing] to give a high priority to research on serious mental illnesses." But NIH officials and scientific societies say that he's meddling in a grantsmaking process that is the envy of the world. NIH Director Elias Zerhouni called the amendment "unjustified scientific censorship." This year's vote came as a rude shock to the two principal investigators. "I'm disappointed that peer review is being undermined," says Sandra Murray of the University at Buffalo, New York, who received $345,161 from NIMH in 2005 and expected similar amounts through early 2009. Murray is enrolling newlywed couples in a study of factors that contribute to stable marriage and to divorce, which, she notes, "has a huge societal cost." Neugebauer says funds for "research on happiness" would be better spent on new treatments for depression. The second grant, to Edward Wasserman of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, continues his 15-year investigation of perception and cognition in pigeons. The study, which is slated to receive about $298,688 a year through mid-2009, sheds light on "how the human brain works," Wasserman says. Neugebauer, however, questions whether it "would have any value for understanding mental illness." The American Psychological Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges were part of a coalition that tried unsuccessfully last week to quash the amendment, sending a flurry of letters to lawmakers. Several Democrats also opposed the cancellation. The amendment passed as part of a set of amendments that were not debated on the floor, and no vote count was recorded. Observers expect the amendment to be deleted, as was the case last year, when the House and Senate meet to reconcile differences in the two bills. Still, says lobbyist Patrick White of the Association of American Universities, "our community has got to wake up on this. ... We have a serious problem, and it’s not going away." --JOCELYN KAISER Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 7561 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Susan S. Lang ITHACA, N.Y. -- The theory that the mind works like a computer, in a series of distinct stages, was an important steppingstone in cognitive science, but it has outlived its usefulness, concludes a new Cornell University study. Instead, the mind should be thought of more as working the way biological organisms do: as a dynamic continuum, cascading through shades of grey. In a new study published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (June 27-July 1), Michael Spivey, a psycholinguist and associate professor of psychology at Cornell, tracked the mouse movements of undergraduate students while working at a computer. The findings provide compelling evidence that language comprehension is a continuous process. "For decades, the cognitive and neural sciences have treated mental processes as though they involved passing discrete packets of information in a strictly feed-forward fashion from one cognitive module to the next or in a string of individuated binary symbols -- like a digital computer," said Spivey. "More recently, however, a growing number of studies, such as ours, support dynamical-systems approaches to the mind. In this model, perception and cognition are mathematically described as a continuous trajectory through a high-dimensional mental space; the neural activation patterns flow back and forth to produce nonlinear, self-organized, emergent properties -- like a biological organism."

Keyword: Attention; Language
Link ID: 7560 - Posted: 06.28.2005