Curious female rats, more willing to step out and explore their environment, survive breast and pituitary tumors longer than their more cautious sisters, says a Penn State researcher. Dr. Sonia Cavigelli, assistant professor of biobehavioral health, says that her study of 80 female rats from birth to death shows that the curious ones with tumors lived, on average, an additional six months, or 25 percent longer lives, than the cautious ones. "It's difficult to extrapolate from rats to people,Ó she notes.ÒHowever, there have been studies that show that shy elderly people report more health symptoms than their more outgoing age-mates. Our new results with rats are consistent with those findings and support the notion that personality traits may have a significant impact on health and resilience to disease." Cavigelli, who joined the Penn State faculty in August, detailed the results at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting in Vancouver, Canada, in a paper, Exploratory Tendency During Infancy and Survival in Female Rats with Spontaneous Tumors. She conducted the study while she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. Her co-authors are J. R. Yee, graduate student in human development, and Dr. Martha McClintock, professor of psychology, both at the University of Chicago.

Keyword: Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 7003 - Posted: 03.09.2005

Roger Harris Imagine life without numbers. Science as we know it would be impossible and, indeed, so would modern civilization. Yet, some societies get along just fine without numbers greater than four or five. Two studies of Amazonian rainforest tribes reported simultaneously in the journal Science (October 15) used this paucity to shed light on how people perceive, learn and reason with numbers. In one of the investigations, a French team of cognitive neuroscientists led by Pierre Pica from Paris University studied speakers of Mundurukú in central Brazil. Mundurukú lacks vocabulary for numbers beyond 5, so it's a natural experiment for investigating the process of counting—associating real things with abstract symbols such as words. But how is anyone able to count at all? To answer this question, team member Stanislas Dehaene developed a neuronal-network model of number processing, which is built on behavioral and brain-imaging studies. He hypothesizes that human beings have a "number sense," an evolutionarily ancient cerebral system that enables people to approximate quantities. This system is capable only of simple computations, but humans have tweaked it by inventing cultural "tools" such as number symbols and counting routines. These confer the ability to perform accurate calculations. Because the Mundurukú have so few number words, they're ideal to test this hypothesis. To do so, the French scientists devised a series of simple experiments based on presenting subjects with various numbers of dots on a solar-powered laptop computer screen. © Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society

Keyword: Intelligence
Link ID: 7002 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Robert McHenry Of late there have been a number of stories in the media about happiness, all of them noting with concern that surveys are showing that there isn't enough of it around. Despite historically unprecedented levels of wealth and leisure, citizens of developed countries report that they are no happier than their parents were, or than citizens of less developed countries are, or than someone else is. One of the latest of these reports is "Happiness is Back" by British Labour party advisor Richard Layard, published in Prospect magazine. Layard talks about the surveys, accepts their findings, makes the usual observation about what money does not buy, and then goes on to prescribe a number of mainly government-sponsored actions to improve our general happiness. What is it that we are talking about here? The surveys depend on their respondents' private notions of "happiness," which may differ greatly from person to person and none of which is described for our examination. Layard does not offer a definition or specification for happiness in the individual or in (what interests him most) the collective. He mentions a few examples of experiences that might count toward happiness, but they are mostly instances of momentary pleasure, and he suggests that happiness would consist of a great many of these strung together on the thread of life. © 2005 Tech Central Station

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 7001 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers exploring the brain structures involved in recalling an emotional memory a year later have found evidence for a self-reinforcing "memory loop" -- in which the brain's emotional center triggers the memory center, which in turn further enhances activity in the emotional center. The researchers said their findings suggest why people subject to traumatic events may be trapped in a cycle of emotion and recall that aggravates post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They said their findings also suggest why therapies in which people relive such memories and reshape perspective to make it less traumatic can help people cope with such memories. The paper by Florin Dolcos, Kevin LaBar and Roberto Cabeza, was published online February 9, 2005, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers are in Duke University's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Brain Imaging and Analysis Center. Their work was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. "This study is the first to really test recall of emotional memories after a long time period," said Cabeza.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 7000 - Posted: 03.09.2005

Cooking shows on TV usually give a Web address where you can find, read, and print out the recipe of the dish created on that day’s show. The reason is obvious: It’s too hard to just follow along with what the chef is doing, let alone remember it all. There are too many directions and ingredients — too many variables and steps in the process to keep track of quickly. New research shows why it doesn’t take much for a new problem or an unfamiliar task to tax our thinking. According to University of Queensland cognitive science researchers Graeme S. Halford, Rosemary Baker, Julie E. McCredden and John D. Bain of Griffith University, the number of individual variables we can mentally handle while trying to solve a problem (like baking a lemon meringue pie) is relatively small: Four variables are difficult; five are nearly impossible. Their report, "How Many Variables Can Humans Process?" is published in the January 2005 issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society. It’s difficult to measure the limits of processing capacity because most people automatically use problem solving skills to break down large complex problems into small, manageable "chunks." A baker, for example, will treat "cream butter, sugar and egg together" as a single chunk — a single step in the process — rather than thinking of each ingredient separately. Likewise she won’t think, "break egg one into bowl, break egg two into bowl." She’ll just think, "add all of the eggs."

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 6999 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Ronald Kotulak, Tribune science reporter The discovery of an early stage of Alzheimer's disease may drive up the number of Americans thought to have the memory-robbing disorder by 100 percent or more, researchers at Chicago's Rush University reported Monday in the science journal Neurology. Mild cognitive impairment, in which a person has increasing difficulty forming new memories, had been considered a normal part of aging but now appears to be an indicator of Alzheimer's disease, said the study's lead author, Dr. David A. Bennett, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Center at Rush. The researchers emphasized, however, that most people who worry about losing their memory as they age are not suffering from creeping Alzheimer's. The findings emerged from the largest study ever conducted on people diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment. The research, which involved postmortem examinations of the brains of 180 Catholic nuns, priests and brothers, indicates that most of the 2.5 million to 10 million Americans with that condition may already have some degree of Alzheimer's disease. Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 6998 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Firm suggested to writer that link between SIDS, secondhand smoke be downplayed Alex Barnum, Chronicle Staff Writer Researchers at UCSF reviewing once-secret industry documents have detailed an elaborate effort by a leading tobacco company to raise doubts among doctors and public health officials about the well-established link between secondhand smoke and sudden infant death syndrome. The UCSF analysis shows how, in one case, executives at Philip Morris International hired a consultant to write a scientific article on the causes of SIDS, and persuaded him to change his original conclusions so the article called into question the connection to secondhand smoke. The article, published in 2001 in a respected medical journal, has been cited at least 19 times by other scientific papers, which meant it was taken seriously by medical researchers and, ultimately, the UCSF researchers say, was used to mislead doctors and public health officials about the risks of secondhand smoke. The tobacco companies "have this strategy to exert a subtle but very important influence over the research. It is designed to get the whole medical literature off in the wrong direction," said Stanton Glantz, a UCSF professor of medicine and senior author of the analysis. ©2005 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6997 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHICAGO – Therapy for panic disorder that combines an evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with medication may be more effective than the usual care offered to these patients in a primary care setting, according to an article in the March issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Panic disorder is one of the most disabling and costly anxiety disorders and is commonly treated in primary care settings, according to background information in the article. This randomized, controlled trial assesses the extent to which the benefits of evidence-based, specialist-delivered, panic disorder interventions can be generalized to primary care settings with non-specialist therapists and more diverse patient populations. Peter P. Roy-Bryne, M.D., of the University of Washington School of Medicine at Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, and colleagues randomly assigned 232 primary-care patients meeting the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) criteria for panic disorder to receive treatment as usual (medication and counseling from the physician on recognition and treatment of panic disorder) or to receive an intervention consisting of up to six sessions in the course of three months of CBT, with up to six follow-up telephone contacts during the next nine months, and medications provided by the primary care physician with guidance from a psychiatrist. The patients were selected from six primary care clinics associated with three university medical schools, serving a diverse patient population.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 6996 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE Regard the colicky baby at full throttle. Tiny arms and legs stiffen. Tummy goes hard. Face resembles a beet emitting paroxysmal shrieks. Unbelievably, the cry goes on for one, two, even three hours without pause. What's a parent to do? Run a checklist. Is the baby hungry? Wet? Feeling gas pains? Allergic to something? No, nothing is wrong. The baby appears healthy, even thriving. So typically nerve-shattered, exhausted parents call the pediatrician who, after examining the infant, gives a diagnosis: colic. Then, reflecting the deep mystery that still surrounds unsoothable crying, the physician offers medical advice, which these days falls into these three camps: • Colic is perfectly normal; learn to live with it. It is temporary. • Colic indicates something is wrong with your baby; keep looking for the cause and treat it, or get help for the family. • Colic is inevitable; but you can try a new method that will stop crying by turning on a baby's internal "calming instinct." Like deadlocked juries, medical experts who study colic agree on a central observation: all babies cry for short periods, but one in five has prolonged bouts of frantic screaming. Then they beg to differ. The controversy is being played out in medical journals, at conferences and, for the frazzled parents, in books written for the layman. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6995 - Posted: 03.08.2005

MADISON - The willingness to call out in distress to get help from others appears to be regulated by two brain systems with very different responsibilities, according to a study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "These findings have far-reaching implications because they help clarify how a balance of two important brain systems can influence an individual's behavior and emotional expression in times of need," says Ned Kalin, senior author on the study and chair of psychiatry at UW Medical School. "The findings suggest that how open an individual is willing to be in asking for help may depend more than we thought on how secure that individual feels at any given time in a supportive relationship." The brain systems found to be involved were the amygdala, which is important in detecting and responding to threats, and the right prefrontal cortex, which plays a role in reaching goals and attaching to others. The study will appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition during the week of March 7-11.

Keyword: Emotions; Stress
Link ID: 6994 - Posted: 03.08.2005

A cluster of brain cells less than half the size of a pencil eraser tells you when to wake up, when to be hungry and when it's time to go to sleep. The same cells also cause you to be disoriented after you've flown across multiple time zones. The human circadian clock, comprised of about 20,000 time-keeping cells, has mystified scientists since it was pinpointed in the brain about 30 years ago. Now, a researcher at the University of Calgary is getting a little bit closer to understanding how it ticks. Dr. Michael Antle, a neuroscientist in the U of C's Department of Psychology, has conclusively shown that the 20,000 cells are organized in a complex network of groups that perform different functions – contrary to the previously held belief that each cell did the same thing. Antle, an emerging leader in the field, has two new papers on the subject: one is featured on the March cover of the prestigious Trends in Neurosciences, and another is due out in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Neurosciences. "There are enormous health, safety and economic benefits to figuring out how the circadian clock works," Antle says. "We are probably still at least 10 years away from developing a pill that could reset your circadian clock to eliminate jet lag, but this new perspective in how the cells are organized definitely improves our understanding."

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 6993 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NEW YORK, NY – Treatment of schizophrenia has largely focused on controlling positive symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions, while another set of symptoms that are equally important to patients is frequently overlooked by physicians, according to the findings of a new national consumer survey and the authors of a new consensus statement aimed at raising the bar for the treatment of the brain disease. Comprehensive treatment of all schizophrenia symptoms is possible and many people with schizophrenia can now recover in ways not previously thought possible, according to the panel of nationally recognized psychiatrists and psychologists whose discussions and recommendations are published in a supplement to the current issues of Primary Psychiatry and CNS Spectrums (CNS Spectr. 2005;10(2 Suppl 1):1-16). A copy of the supplement can also be accessed at http://www.mblcommunications.com/proceedings.php3. "Traditionally, physicians have been oriented to treating schizophrenia by preventing symptoms from getting worse, rather than helping the person continue to get better beyond their current level of symptoms and functioning," said Peter J. Weiden, MD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Schizophrenia Research Service at State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, an author of the statement. "But we now know that by taking a long-term focus and tackling a broader range of symptoms, many patients do steadily improve so that they can function better, and live fuller, more complete lives."

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 6992 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Rockville, Md. - Although they are dramatically different, words and faces are both recognized by parts, according to a study published in February in the Journal of Vision, an online, free access publication of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). It has been suggested that faces and words are recognized differently, that faces are identified by wholes, whereas words and other objects are identified by parts. However, Marialuisa Martelli, Najib Majaj, and Denis Pelli, three neuroscientists from New York University, conducted a study that finds individuals use letters to recognize words and facial features to recognize faces. To reach this finding, experiments were performed in which observers were asked to focus on a black dot, to the right of which was a letter. To the left of the dot was a three-letter word in which the letter to the right was in the middle of that word. The visual experiments also involved manipulated faces and facial features. In this case, observers would focus on a black dot. To the dot's right were lips that were fat or thin, or smiling or frowning. To the left of the dot was an entire face. When the words to the left were spaced normally and the face was of normal proportions, subjects had a great deal of difficulty identifying out of their peripheral vision the letter and the characteristics of the lips. Pelli concludes that context hinders identification and crowds what is to be identified.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 6991 - Posted: 03.08.2005

— The U.S. government has launched an investigation into whether the mass beaching of dolphins in South Florida this past week was caused by naval exercises involving a sonar-equipped submarine, officials said late Saturday. More than 60 disoriented dolphins swam into ankle-deep waters off the Florida Keys near the town of Marathon last Wednesday, prompting a massive rescue operation involving wildlife officials and dozens of volunteers. Some of the mammals were successfully led back to deep water, but about two dozen others have already died or have been euthanized to stop their suffering. Biologists and park rangers are taking care of the rest. But U.S. Navy and environmental officials said they were looking into the possibility that top secret exercises involving the U.S.S. Philadelphia — a Los Angeles-class attack submarine — had anything to do with the tragic events. "The Navy takes this very seriously and is, of course, interested in the outcome" of the investigation, Senior Chief Gregg Snaza, a spokesman for the U.S. Fleet Force Command, told AFP in a telephone interview from Norfolk, Va. Copyright © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 6990 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Monkeys are more likely to steal food from a "competitor" that is turned away from them, showing that they may understand what others can see, new research suggests. Following the gaze of others is an important skill that many animals are capable of - if one animal in a group sees a predator the others will look round to see what it is looking at, thus alerting them. But there has been much debate as to whether monkeys are able to go one step further and consider the perceptions of others based on where they are looking. Previous work has suggested they cannot make this connection, but this could be because some previous studies have not used the competitive situations that could bring about this behaviour. "In one study the researcher would try to tell the monkey where the food was using his eyes," says Jonathan Flombaum, who carried out a new study with Laurie Santos, both of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, US. "That's a foreign situation for them. A monkey would never help others to find food - they compete." Flombaum's own experience suggested the experiments could be providing false results. "The monkeys are good at stealing food from me, and the reason they're good is that they always try it when I'm not paying attention or am turned the other way," he says. That behaviour suggests that the monkeys reason that if he is turned away, he cannot see them. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 6989 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roxanne Khamsi Does laughing make your heart healthier? It may sound funny, but doctors now say they have serious evidence to support the idea. A new study shows that enjoying a joke or two can improve the function of blood vessels. Medical experts have warned about the effects of stress on cardiovascular health, and science backs up their concerns: When faced with a difficult situation, the body releases hormones that elevate blood pressure. These hormones, adrenaline and noradrenaline, produce this effect by causing blood vessels to constrict. Left untreated, high blood pressure can lead to a stroke or a heart attack. Doctors often recommend that people with this condition take more time to relax during their workday and incorporate stress-busting physical activity into their life. But less is known about psychosocial behaviours that can benefit the body's cardiovascular system. A study published in 2000 provided preliminary evidence that laughter can help the heart, says Michael Miller, director of preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 6988 - Posted: 06.24.2010

PITTSBURGH,– Generations of neuroscientists have been indoctrinated into believing that our senses, thoughts, feelings and movements are orchestrated by a communication network of brain cells, or neurons, each responsible for relaying one specific chemical message called a neurotransmitter. Either neurons release a neurotransmitter that excites a neighboring cell, thereby triggering an electrical discharge and enhancing brain activity, or they dispatch a signal that quells a neuron's activity. So, when researchers at the University of Pittsburgh discovered that immature rat brain cells could fire a simultaneous three-punch salvo – three neurotransmitters bursting out of a single cell -- it was a finding they knew would excite more than just neurons. Just as surprising, they report in the lead article of this month's Nature Neuroscience, is that by definition these three neurotransmitters are seemingly at odds with each other. One, glutamate, is a textbook excitatory neurotransmitter; while the other two, GABA and glycine, are quintessential inhibitory neurotransmitters. Information is transmitted between neurons when one cell releases a neurotransmitter at a synapse, the point of contact between cells. When released from a cell, neurotransmitters are sent on a one-way ride that dead ends at the membrane of the adjacent cell. Like lock and key, they bind to specific receptors on the surface of the receiving cell, causing its electrical activity to be enhanced or inhibited.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 6987 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers have discovered how dopamine — a molecule important for communication between neurons in the brain — stimulates the synthesis of proteins in neuronal processes. This local stimulation of protein synthesis may modify synapses in the brain during learning, said the researchers. The new findings add to the understanding of dopamine's influence on the brain's reward circuitry that appears to be altered by addictive drugs. The research team, led by Erin M. Schuman, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the California Institute of Technology, published its findings in the March 3, 2005, issue of the journal Neuron. Lead author on the paper was Bryan Smith in Schuman's laboratory. Neurons trigger nerve impulses in their neighbors by launching bursts of neurotransmitters, such as glutamate and dopamine, across junctions called synapses. The neurotransmitter receiving stations on neurons are tiny spines that festoon the surfaces of dendrites, which are small branches that extend from neurons. “Dopamine and regulation of dopamine signaling is important for reward circuits in the brain, including those responsible for our ability to learn about the positive or negative consequences of environmental stimuli including drugs of abuse,” said Schuman. Dopamine-triggered neuronal signaling is also involved in regulating motivation, and in such diseases as Parkinson's disease and schizophrenia, she said. © 2005 Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6986 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JOHN LELAND Barbara Birmingham faced a busy weekend recently, so she went into her medicine cabinet for a fix: a couple of doses of a medication that had been pulled from the market for safety reasons. Her leftover supply of the drug enabled her to get through the weekend. When she told her doctor what she had done, she says, he scolded her. Mrs. Birmingham, 74, who lives in a retirement community outside Detroit, has arthritis pain that is so severe on some days that she cannot pull up the sheets on her bed. The pills she took were Vioxx, which were prescribed for her last year and were "a godsend," she said - at least until the drug's manufacturer, Merck & Company, withdrew it from the market in September because it appeared to double rates of heart attack and stroke. Since then, Mrs. Birmingham has joined millions of former users and doctors scrambling to reinvent life after Vioxx, and often wondering which drug that they are taking or prescribing will be discovered to be unsafe next. After Merck pulled Vioxx, clinical trials linked a similar and likewise relatively new pain medication, Celebrex, to increased risk of heart disease, though the manufacturer, Pfizer Inc., did not withdraw it. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 6985 - Posted: 03.07.2005

A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis is giving the VIP treatment to laboratory mice in hopes of unraveling more clues about our biological clock. VIP is not "very important person," but vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP), a neuropeptide originally found in the gut, that is also made by a specialized group of neurons in the brain. Erik Herzog, Ph.D., Washington University assistant professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, has discovered that VIP is needed by the brain's biological clock to coordinate daily rhythms in behavior and physiology. Neurons in the biological clock, an area called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), keep 24-hour time and are normally synchronized as a well-oiled marching band coming onto the field at half time. Herzog and graduate student, Sara Aton, found that mice lacking the gene that makes VIP or lacking the receptor molecule for VIP suffer from internal de-synchrony. When they recorded the electrical activity of SCN neurons from these mice, they found that many had lost their beat while others were cycling but unable to synch to each other. But when Herzog and Aton added VIP to the mice cells, the synchronicity was restored, showing that VIP couples pacemaker cells and drives rhythms in slave cells. "VIP between SCN neurons is like a rubber band between the pendulums of two grandfather clocks, helping to synchronize their timing. Some researchers had proposed that knocking out VIP or the receptor for it stopped the clock," Herzog said. "We've found that the biological clock is still running, but its internal synchrony is uncoordinated. This causes irregular patterns of sleep and wake, for example."

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 6984 - Posted: 03.07.2005