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

Naila Moreira Before it moves, the robot doesn't look like much. A rickety bundle of metal plates and rods standing on two thin legs, it resembles a science fair project more than it does a major advance in technology. Only two small motors, some simple wiring at its hip, and two batteries weigh it down. Then, with a slight push off one heel, the robot steps forward and ambles along with a remarkably human gait. This graceful stride differs radically from the stiff, unnatural motion of traditional two-legged robots. Not only that, says its co-creator Andy Ruina of Cornell University, but the walker uses a small fraction of the energy required by other two-legged machines, and it runs on a control system no more complex than that of a coffee machine. In fact, Ruina says, this slender, 1-meter-tall robot, simple as it looks, introduces a new class of robotics based on the theory known as passive dynamics. The principles of passive-dynamic walking emerged in the late 1980s, pioneered by roboticist Tad McGeer, now with the InSitu Group in Bingen, Wash. While at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, McGeer showed that a humanlike frame can walk itself down a slope without requiring muscles or motors. Unlike traditional robots, which guzzle energy by using motors to control every motion, McGeer's early passive-dynamic robots relied only on gravity and the natural swinging of their limbs to move forward. Copyright ©2005 Science Service.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 7740 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Review by Rob Loftis, Ph.D. on Aug 2nd 2005 Elizabeth Lloyd's new book has attracted a lot of attention for a technical work of academic philosophy, including profiles in the New York Times and Slate, and an appearance on The View (right between an interview with television doctor Noah Wyle about the health insurance crisis in America and a tribute to Merv Griffin). Lloyd was even the subject of a joke on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update," certainly a first for the philosophic community. Lloyd's book is obviously receiving attention because her topic is, quite literally, sexy. But perhaps more importantly for the popular media, her theses are very easy to state in layman's terms. Lloyd believes that the female orgasm is a evolutionary byproduct of the male orgasm, the same way that male nipples are a byproduct of the evolution of female nipples. Furthermore, she believes that biases in the research community have prevented scientists from seeing this obvious truth, including a bias toward adaptive explanations and a nasty tendency to assume female sexuality is like male sexuality. Clearly, she has an interesting and important set of theses. On top of that, her argument has a straightforward, logical structure. She canvasses the 20 adaptive accounts that have been proposed so far and finds obvious gaps in reasoning, while the one nonadaptive account has a lot of prima facie evidence for it. It is nice to see that you can get on television with a clear and important argument. Copyright © CenterSite, LLC, 1995-2005

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 7739 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(WebMD) Women who smoke during pregnancy may be twice as likely to give birth to a child with behavioral problems like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A new study shows that smoking during pregnancy doubled the risk of having a child with ADHD or other behavioral disorders that involve hyperactivity, inattention, and acting impulsively, known as hyperkinetic disorders. Experts have long recommended that women stop smoking during pregnancy in order to reduce the risk of birth defects and other problems. But this study suggests that exposure to nicotine in the womb may also affect the development of the baby's brain and increase the risk of behavioral problems like ADHD. Researchers say ADHD and hyperkinetic disorders are the most common psychological problems diagnosed in children. The two behavioral problems include many of the same symptoms and were treated as one in the study. In the study, Danish researchers examined the association between smoking during pregnancy and ADHD in 170 children with the behavioral problem and more than 3,700 healthy children matched by age, sex, and date of birth. Initially researchers found women who smoked during pregnancy were three times as likely to have a child with ADHD as nonsmokers. ©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc.

Keyword: ADHD; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7738 - Posted: 06.24.2010

As anyone whose nerves have been jangled by a baby's howl or who have been riveted by the sight of an attractive person knows, nature has evolved sensory systems to be exquisitely tuned to relevant input. A major question in neurobiology is how neurons tune the strength of their interconnections to optimally respond to such inputs. Neuronal circuitry consists of a web of neurons, each triggering others by launching bursts of neurotransmitters at targets on receiving neurons to produce nerve impulses in those targets. Neurons adjust the strength of those connections adaptively, to amplify or suppress connections. Some four decades ago, a general principle called the "efficient coding hypothesis" was formulated, holding that sensory systems adjust to efficiently represent the complex, dynamic sounds, sights, and other sensory input from the environment. Writing in the August 4, 2005, issue of Neuron, researchers led by Christian K. Machens of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Andreas Herz of Humboldt-University Berlin describe experiments with grasshopper auditory neurons that reveal new details of such sensory coding. Their findings show that "optimal stimulus ensembles" that trigger the neurons differ from those the grasshopper hears in the natural environment but largely overlap with components of natural sounds found in mating and mate-location calls. In their experiments, the researchers first played various snippets of white noise to isolated grasshopper auditory nerves and measured the electrophysiological signals reflecting the reactions of the auditory neurons to those sounds. These experiments revealed the distribution of stimuli called the "optimal stimulus ensemble" (OSE) that allowed the neurons in the system to perform optimally.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hearing
Link ID: 7737 - Posted: 08.05.2005

As children, we believed that eating carrots could help us see better, but it seems that what makes leafy greens green might keep us healthy and seeing longer. Digging into that spinach salad could help to protect you against the leading cause of blindness worldwide — cataracts — as well as helping your wasteline. "I've always been interested in the role of diet in disease," says nutrition researcher Joshua Bomser. He had a particular interest in the plant pigments that play a critical role in photosynthesis, known as Carotenoids, that are found in many of the everyday fruits and vegetables we eat. "There's been some speculation that they can prevent the development of skin cancer, as well as the development of macular degeneration and age-related cataracts," he explains. "There are about 40 carotenoids that naturally occur in the diet. Of those, only lutein and zeaxanthin accumulate in the lens of the eye." Lutein and zeaxanthin are found in vegetables like kale, spinach and collard greens. So, Bomser and his colleagues at Ohio State University wanted to find out whether these plant pigments, which are found in high concentrations in dark green leafy vegetables, could protect the lens of the eye against the damaging ultraviolet rays of the sun and prevent cataracts. "We were able to show that lutein and zeaxanthin could reduce ultraviolet radiation induced damage in the lens," Bomser says. © ScienCentral, 2000-2005

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 7736 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Laparoscopic surgeon Butch Rosser had an epiphany several years ago when a reporter sat in on one of his procedures and wrote, "I saw the work of the Nintendo surgeon." "Now that just hit me when I read that," says Rosser, who is now director of minimally invasive surgery at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. "And I said, 'Well I am a gamer, all the way back to the days of pong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong . Is that why I can do this a little better than the average bear? Is that why this seems so natural to me? Because I navigate in a video game environment?'" Laparoscopic surgeons work by cutting very small holes in a person's skin and inserting what are essentially long joysticks — with a fiber optic camera and surgical tools attached to the end of them — into a person's body to perform "minimally invasive surgery". Without having to cut a person open to look inside, the tiny camera allows them to operate by seeing everything on a video monitor, while making post-surgery recovery much easier. The similarities between this kind of procedure and playing video games struck Rosser so much, he did his own study in 2004 where he compared the surgical skills of surgeons who played video games with those who did not. Skill was measured in a standardized laparoscopic training exercise created by Rosser called "Top Gun." © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Intelligence
Link ID: 7735 - Posted: 06.24.2010