A mass experiment which aims to test the emotional intelligence and intuition of people living in the UK is being launched in Edinburgh. Professor Richard Wiseman will detail the test at the start of the Edinburgh Science Festival on Friday. Photographs of people smiling will be on display at the festival, with participants asked to identify which are genuine grins and which are fake. Everyone taking part will get feedback about their own intuitive abilities. People can also view the specially commissioned photographs and take part in the study online. Participants will be asked to complete a short questionnaire on intuition, allowing researchers to examine the types of people who are especially good at recognising emotions in others. Certain parts of each face will be masked in the pictures to help discover which provide most information. (C)BBC

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 7123 - Posted: 04.01.2005

A paralysed man in the US has become the first person to benefit from a brain chip that reads his mind. Matthew Nagle, 25, was left paralysed from the neck down and confined to a wheelchair after a knife attack in 2001. The pioneering surgery at New England Sinai Hospital, Massachusetts, last summer means he can now control everyday objects by thought alone. The brain chip reads his mind and sends the thoughts to a computer to decipher. He can think his TV on and off, change channels and alter the volume thanks to the technology and software linked to devices in his home. Scientists have been working for some time to devise a way to enable paralysed people to control devices with the brain. Studies have shown that monkeys can control a computer with electrodes implanted into their brain. Recently four people, two of them partly paralysed wheelchair users, were able to move a computer cursor while wearing a cap with 64 electrodes that pick up brain waves. Mr Nagle's device, called BrainGate, consists of nearly 100 hair-thin electrodes implanted a millimetre deep into part of the motor cortex of his brain that controls movement. Wires feed the information from the electrodes into a computer which analyses the brain signals. The signals are interpreted and translated into cursor movements, offering the user an alternative way to control devices such as a computer with thought. (C)BBC

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 7122 - Posted: 04.01.2005

By HENRY FOUNTAIN In a finding that could help explain why a sucker never gets an even break, scientists are reporting today that they have succeeded in visualizing feelings of trust developing in a specific region of the brain. In the study, pairs of anonymous subjects were strapped into magnetic resonance imaging scanners 1,500 miles apart. The participants played 10 consecutive rounds of a risk-taking game that involved balancing monetary profit and trust. While they played, the scanners, synchronized through the Internet, measured how the subjects' brains reacted. With the development of trusting feelings, increased blood flow occurred in the caudate nucleus, an area in the rear part of the brain that is involved in processing rewards. Over time, this increased blood flow appeared earlier as an expectation of trustworthiness was established. The study's authors, from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and the California Institute of Technology, say their work shows that, at some level, the process of building trust is as basic as obtaining food or other rewards. The caudate nucleus appears to play a central role in evaluating the fairness of another person's actions and in signaling the intention to trust that person. Future studies, they said, may prove useful for understanding autism, schizophrenia or other behavioral disorders where the ability to form internal models of other people may be impaired. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 7121 - Posted: 04.01.2005

Alzheimer’s disease has stolen one of Frances Goldstein’s favorite past-times – reading a good book. Unable to remember parts she’s already read, picking up a book has become too frustrating. “It bothers her greatly, because reading has always been her love besides me of course,” says Jacobo Goldstein, Frances’ husband. Unfortunately, because current drugs simply slow the progression of Alzheimer’s, little can be done to restore memory in Alzheimer’s patients like Frances Goldstein. Alzheimer’s is a degenerative brain disease that starts with memory loss and can end with severe brain damage. It is believed that about 4 million adults in the U.S. are stricken with Alzheimer’s and if no effective therapies are developed it is estimated that by 2050 14 million Americans will have the disease. But researcher Lauren Billings of the University of California, Irvine believes she‘s discovered what triggers memory problems before Alzheimer’s sets in. Scientists know that deposits called plaques build up in between cells in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and cause memory loss. The plaques are made up of a protein called ‘beta amyloid’. “Once you've got plaques you've already got memory loss and it might be too late to intervene and sort of halt the progress of the disease.” Previous research has focused on mice engineered to develop Alzheimer’s – called ‘transgenic’ mice, only after they’ve developed plaques. Billings however, followed these mice over their entire life span, and saw that the protein first collects inside their brain cells before the plaques form in between the cells. At the same time the mice began to have problems remembering tasks they’d learned. Billings’ work suggests that the protein’s affects might start even earlier than anticipated. “We think that that initial trigger for memory loss is the accumulation of beta amyloid inside cells.” (C) ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 7120 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers trying to tease out the genetic basis of dyslexia have discovered a location on chromosome 2 that may contain one or more genes that contribute to the reading disorder and make it difficult for people to rapidly pronounce pseudowords. The team from the University of Washington, headed by medical geneticists Dr. Wendy Raskind and Ellen Wijsman and developmental psychologist Virginia Berninger, cautioned that the new findings do not mean that scientists have found "the gene" responsible for dyslexia. "Just as with heart disease, no single gene will provide the answer to what causes dyslexia," said Raskind. "When you look at something that is inherited there could be multiple genes, perhaps as many as a hundred, that contribute to it. And when you look at any characteristic of a person, you must consider the environmental background. There are other factors besides genes that could modify a behavior." The study, published in the March issue of the journal Molecular Psychiatry, is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it points to a new location containing genes that contribute to dyslexia. Second, the gene or genes at that location are involved in speed of decoding – changing written words into spoken words without clues to their meaning – a basic and persistent component of dyslexia.

Keyword: Dyslexia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7119 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Mark Peplow A bionic eye that allows blind people to see has now got a protective coat of diamond that should significantly improve its performance. The silicon chip retinal implant is being developed by Second Sight, a company based in Sylmar, California, along with a consortium of university researchers. The device needs a hermetic case to prevent it from reacting with fluids in the eye. "It's as if you're throwing a television into the ocean and expecting it to work," says the company's president, Robert Greenberg. "The approach until now has been to lock it in a big waterproof can, but it's very big and bulky," he explains. So researchers have developed an ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) film that is guaranteed to be safe, long-lasting, electrically insulating and extremely tough. The coating can also be applied at low temperatures that do not melt the chip's microscopic circuits. The UNCD film is the first coating to meet all the necessary criteria for the implant, says Xingcheng Xiao, a materials scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois, who developed the film. The tiny diamond grains that make up the film are about 5 millionths of a millimetre across. They grow from a mixture of methane, argon and hydrogen passing over the surface of the five-millimetre-square chip at about 400 °C. Xiao and his colleagues have already tested the implants in rabbits' eyes, and saw no adverse reaction after six months. He will present the results on 1 April at the Materials Research Society meeting in San Francisco, California. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 7118 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Winning, not losing, triggers violence among supporters after a sports match, a study suggests. Welsh researchers found more victims of assault were treated at Cardiff's A&E department after Wales won at rugby or football than if they had lost. The same was true even if the national teams were playing away. Writing in the journal Injury Prevention, the researchers say alcohol is a major factor - and add their findings should help prevent violence. Cardiff has a population of about 300,000, and international rugby and football matches often attract in excess of 70,000 fans. A team from the Violence Research Group at Cardiff University looked at the number of assault cases seen at the city's only casualty department between May 1995 and April 2002. The unit is about a mile from the national stadium. During this time, 106 home and away fixtures took place - 74 rugby matches and 32 football matches. Almost 27,000 assault cases required emergency treatment over the course of the study. On average, 30 cases of assault required medical attention on the day of the match and the day after. On days when no match had been played, the average number of assault cases fell to 21. (C)BBC

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 7117 - Posted: 03.31.2005

Brenda Maddox Going Sane by Adam Phillips Adam Phillips's favourite pronoun is "we." He assumes an audience of like-minded people who have read the same books and who warm to generalisations such as "we don't think of babies as sane," and "we have become the only animals who cannot bear themselves." In his latest book, Going Sane, this prolific psychoanalytic populariser develops the idea that "we" need a new definition of sanity. "We can't quite work out how our lives would be better, or even different, if we were sane." Whom is he talking to? Not me. Certainly not in his claim that madness is artistically fascinating, that "sanity doesn't quite come to life for us in the same way: it has no drama." Tell that to any admirer of Leopold Bloom, the Dublin Jew who holds Ulysses together with his humane ordinariness. And what about Jane Eyre, sitting in the windowseat at Thornfield Hall while the upper classes frolic at charades? And Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer? The honest life reasonably led is as much the essence of literature as the disquiet of Hamlet or the murderousness of Raskolnikov. © Copyright 2004 - Prospect Magazine

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 7116 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It may not be one of life’s deepest mysteries, but as scientific conundrums go, it has a peculiar staying power. Why is yawning contagious? Researchers recently found that yawning isn’t only catching among people; it is also among chimpanzees. (Click here for a brief video from this research.) No one has devised a fully convincing explanation of why. Compounding the mystery is the odd way in which the contagious power of yawning is largely unconscious. We can see someone yawn, yearn to replicate the action ourselves, and do it, all without thinking about it. Other times we’re aware it is happening, though it still floats somewhere beneath the realm of reason and of purposeful actions. So what gives? In an effort to find the answer, the Finnish government recently funded a brain scanning study. The results turned up some hard-to-interpret, possible clues. It also confirmed the obvious: yawn contagion is largely unconscious. Wherever it might affect the brain, it bypasses the known brain circuitry for consciously analyzing and mimicking other people’s actions. This circuitry is called the “mirror-neuron system,” because it contains a special type of brain cells, or neurons, that become active both when their owner does something, and when he or she senses someone else doing the same thing.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 7115 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Sleeping woes may explain why children with epilepsy are often so hyperactive, say researchers with the University of Florida's Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute. Characterized at its extreme by physical convulsions, epilepsy has long been thought to cause excitability and contrariness in children. But UF researchers writing in the journal Epilepsy & Behavior believe the real reason some of these children cannot sit still or pay attention is because they don't get enough shut-eye. “When we treated kids with sleep disturbances, not only did their epilepsy get better, their daytime behavior, concentration and capacity to learn increased,” said Paul Carney, M.D., chief of pediatric neurology at UF's College of Medicine and a professor at the B.J. and Eve Wilder Center for Excellence in Epilepsy Research . “Many kids with epilepsy aren't being adequately assessed for underlying sleep disorders. We can significantly have an impact over their cognition, learning and maybe even improve their epilepsy by improving their sleep.” Epilepsy describes a group of disorders that occur when electrical activity in the brain goes haywire, resulting in bursts of frenetic activity that cause seizures. It strikes more than 2 million people in the United States, according to the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke. Copyright © 2004 | University of Florida

Keyword: Epilepsy; Sleep
Link ID: 7114 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A few rare people who consistently nod off early, then wake up wide-eyed much before dawn, can blame a newly-found mutant gene for their sleep troubles, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers announced today. This odd “time-shift” trait — called familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS) — was studied in one affected family by neurologist Louis J. Ptacek, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher, and Ying-Hui Fu, at the University of California, San Francisco. Their report appears in the March 31, 2005, issue of the journal Nature. The sleep-shifting mutation they found is in “a gene that was not previously shown in mammals to be a circadian rhythm gene,” Ptacek explained. It's not yet clear how the mutant gene works to shift people's sleep time, their circadian rhythm, he added. But follow-on experiments in fruit flies and mice yielded results that are intriguing. When the mutant gene was inserted into the flies, for example, it did the opposite of what was seen in the human family: it lengthened circadian rhythm. Yet in genetically engineered mice, the same gene change made the mice early risers — mimicking what was seen in humans with FASPS. © 2005 Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7113 - Posted: 06.24.2010

When survival is on the line, sex may be the answer. So says a new study that sheds light on the mystery of why sex evolved as a reproductive strategy, despite the time and energy drain of mating. Biologists have shown sexually reproducing yeast adapt more quickly to stressful conditions than asexually dividing yeast do. A century-old theory suggests sex evolved because it increases genetic variation in offspring, accelerating natural selection. But this theory remained untested because comparing sexual and asexual reproduction under identical conditions was a tricky experiment to do. Matthew Goddard of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and colleagues at Imperial College London solved the problem by genetically altering yeast cells to be incapable of reproducing sexually. Normal yeast can reproduce by dividing either asexually, producing daughter cells with little genetic recombination, or sexually, producing spores with only half of the parent's chromosomes. These spores must "mate" with other spores and combine genetic information to create normal yeast. Goddard's group found that both the altered and unaltered yeast grew at the same rate under non-stressful conditions. But when the team stressed cultures of each type of cell by increasing the temperature and adding salt to the mix, the sexually reproducing strain grew faster than the asexual strain. Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 7112 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In a finding that opens new doors to determining susceptibility to antidepressant side effects, researchers at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute report that changes in brain activity prior to treatment with antidepressants can flag patient vulnerability. Published in the April 2005 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Neuropsychopharmacology, the study is the first to link brain function and medication side effects, and to show a relationship between brain function changes during brief placebo treatment and later side effects during treatment with medication. The study's unique design compares brain function changes in healthy research subjects with no history of depression while taking an antidepressant vs. placebo, a pill with inactive ingredients. In addition, all participants took only placebo for one week prior to randomization to medication or placebo. Using "cordance," a quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) imaging technique developed at UCLA, the research team found changes in brain function in the prefrontal region during the one-week placebo lead-in were related to side effects in subjects who received an antidepressant. "This finding shows the promise of new ways for assessing susceptibility to antidepressant side effects," said Aimee M. Hunter, lead author and research fellow at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 7111 - Posted: 03.31.2005

If athletes, soldiers and drivers must perform every day in visually messy environments, common sense suggests that any visual training they receive should include distractions and disorder. New research from the University of Southern California and UC Irvine suggests common sense is wrong in this case. The human vision system learns best in "clear display" conditions without visual noise, said co-authors Zhong-Lin Lu and Barbara Anne Dosher. Their findings appear in a pair of articles in the current issue of PNAS. The research has long-range implications for rehabilitation therapy, treatment of individuals with "lazy eye" or related disorders and training of soldiers, police officers and other personnel who must make split-second decisions in chaotic situations. "Now you can simplify training a lot," said Lu, a professor of psychology in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "Soldiers, for example, have to operate with goggles and all kinds of (visual) devices. Pilots have other kinds of goggles, video displays. They operate in different environments with different kinds of noise and different kinds of interference." "What these results show is, in fact, you only need to train them in a clear display environment."

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 7110 - Posted: 03.31.2005

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Cows mull over problems and, when they solve them, sometimes the apparently brainy bovines display measurable signs of happiness and even jump for joy, according to findings announced at a recent conference on animal feelings and awareness. The conference, entitled "From Darwin to Dawkins: the science and implications of animal sentience," was organized by the Compassion in World Farming Trust. In addition to the cow findings, information also was presented on caring chimpanzees, manipulating parrots, emotional sheep, concerned cats, flies that concentrate and a gorilla that swears when angered. The delegates from nearly 50 nations who attended the conference believe the studies collectively suggest that animals are thinking, feeling, sentient beings that can experience emotions comparable to those felt by humans. "We have to understand that we are not the only beings on this planet with personalities and minds," said keynote speaker Jane Goodall, who outlined her observations on a range of chimpanzee behaviors, from barbarity to altruism. "Even if science can't prove everything about animal sentience, it's high time we gave them the benefit of the doubt." Copyright © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Emotions; Animal Rights
Link ID: 7109 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Crack cocaine is being injected - not just smoked - by a significant number of US drug users, reveals the first large survey of the practice. The phenomenon is particularly worrisome because it is associated with more high-risk behaviour, such as sharing needles and having unprotected sex, than other intravenous drugs. Cocaine is nature's most powerful stimulant and is used by an estimated 14 million people worldwide. In powdered form, it is a hydrochloride salt and can either be snorted or dissolved in water and injected. But in the 1980s, people began using baking soda to strip away the hydrochloride, forming a rock crystal, or crack, that can be smoked. And sometime in the mid-1990s, people began mixing crack with vinegar or other acids to make an injectible form of the drug. "But we weren't sure how common this behaviour was," says Scott Santibanez, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, US. So he and colleagues analysed data taken in the late 1990s on the behaviours and blood test results from almost 2200 young, intravenous drug users. The study sampled six sites around the US. "We found out crack injection was more common than we expected," Santibanez told New Scientist. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7108 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Siobhan McDonough Getting a good night's sleep is hard for many adults and that often means poorer health, lower productivity on the job, more danger on the roads and a less vibrant sex life. "By 3 to 4 in the afternoon, I'm starting to feel brain-drained and I need that caffeine to pick me back up again," said Becky Mcerien, 50, of Philadelphia. She gets about 6.5 hours of sleep a night - slightly less than the adult average of 6.9 hours reported by the National Sleep Foundation. Many experts say adults need a minimum of seven to nine hours of sleep a night. A poll for the foundation, released Tuesday, indicates that three-quarters of adults say they frequently have a sleep problem, such as waking during the night or snoring. Most people ignore the problem and few think they actually have one. Only half of those polled were able to say they slept well on most nights. "I get what I need to function," said Guillermo Sardina, 55, of Hamilton, N.J., who averages six or seven hours a night. "I sleep through the night. I'm a sound sleeper. ... I don't even remember my dreams." © 2005 The Associated Press

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 7107 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Mary Otto Dawn Rieck sat at the dining room table in her split-level house at Andrews Air Force Base, chain-smoking. She wore a distant yet acute expression, as if she were trying to read the wind. She was listening to her daughter play. At that moment, her middle child, Jessica Marie Caughlin, 11, was not beating her 4-year-old brother or killing her big sister's hamster or cutting the goldfish in two. She was not threatening to stab her mother. The knives were all locked in the garage. With this child, however, her mother is always anticipating the next disaster. It's like that for many parents who are raising children with serious mental illness. With nerves and budgets, jobs and marriages regularly strained, they are consumed in the struggle to care for their children. Some say they need help that neither private insurance nor the public health system comes close to covering. Yet this day, Jessica was simply playing with her two dolls. There was a bad doll named Dana Marie Caughlin. And there was a good doll named Princess Angel. "Give me one feather from your wing," Jessica commanded Princess Angel. With the feather, Jessica blessed Dana Marie -- who rose up from the floor and flew briefly, happily -- only to crash again. © 2005 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 7106 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new gene has jumped into the mix of factors that might predispose people to schizophrenia. If additional work supports the finding, the study may provide researchers with potential new drug targets for the disease. People with schizophrenia suffer hallucinations, delusions, and deteriorating social skills. Researchers believe the disease may be up to 80% genetic, with environmental or physiological factors accounting for the rest. As many as 10 different genes have been found that predispose people to schizophrenia to varying extents. But additional chunks of chromosomes also associate with the condition, including at least two to three large regions on chromosome 5. To take a closer look at the role played by chromosome 5, molecular psychiatrist Hugh Gurling at University College London and colleagues examined 450 volunteers with schizophrenia and 450 volunteers with no family history of the disease. Different versions of genes can vary at single points in their sequence, and these variations are called SNPs. The team found that particular SNPs were more common in schizophrenics than in volunteers without the disease. Two of the SNPs lay within a gene called Epsin 4, the researchers report online 25 March in the American Journal of Human Genetics. Epsin 4 is responsible for making a protein involved in packaging and releasing the neurotransmitters that nerve cells use to communicate with one another, and obvious Epsin 4 mutations can now be sought in schizophrenics, the researchers say. Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7105 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Findings may lead to early diagnosis of the disorder and possible therapies Seeing is doing – at least it is when mirror neurons are working normally. But in autistic individuals, say researchers from the University of California, San Diego, the brain circuits that enable people to perceive and understand the actions of others do not behave in the usual way. According to the new study, currently in press at the journal Cognitive Brain Research, electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings of 10 individuals with autism show a dysfunctional mirror neuron system: Their mirror neurons respond only to what they do and not to the doings of others. Mirror neurons are brain cells in the premotor cortex. First identified in macaque monkeys in the early 1990s, the neurons – also known as "monkey-see, monkey-do cells" – fire both when a monkey performs an action itself and when it observes another living creature perform that same action. Though it has been impossible to directly study the analogue of these neurons in people (since human subjects cannot be implanted with electrodes), several indirect brain-imaging measures, including EEG, have confirmed the presence of a mirror neuron system in humans. The human mirror neuron system is now thought to be involved not only in the execution and observation of movement, but also in higher cognitive processes – language, for instance, or being able to imitate and learn from others' actions, or decode their intentions and empathize with their pain.

Keyword: Autism; Vision
Link ID: 7104 - Posted: 06.24.2010