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

The US military is funding development of a weapon that delivers a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims unharmed. But pain researchers are furious that work aimed at controlling pain has been used to develop a weapon. And they fear that the technology will be used for torture. "I am deeply concerned about the ethical aspects of this research," says Andrew Rice, a consultant in pain medicine at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, UK. "Even if the use of temporary severe pain can be justified as a restraining measure, which I do not believe it can, the long-term physical and psychological effects are unknown." The research came to light in documents unearthed by the Sunshine Project, an organisation based in Texas and in Hamburg, Germany, that exposes biological weapons research. The papers were released under the US's Freedom of Information Act. One document, a research contract between the Office of Naval Research and the University of Florida in Gainesville, US, is entitled "Sensory consequences of electromagnetic pulses emitted by laser induced plasmas". It concerns so-called Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs), which fire a laser pulse that generates a burst of expanding plasma when it hits something solid, like a person (New Scientist print edition, 12 October 2002). The weapon, destined for use in 2007, could literally knock rioters off their feet. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 6983 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News — Measurements of Michelangelo's David have shown that all is normal in the naked marble man, though he could have been a little better endowed. The towering sculpture acclaimed for its depiction of male physical perfection, has always been the subject of jokes among Florentines and tourists for the modest dimensions of his "pisello." But according to a study to be published at the end of this month by the Dutch Institute for Art History, in Florence, David's genitals are anatomically correct for a male body in a "pre-fight tension." Carried by professors Massimo Gulisano and colleague Pietro Bernabei of Florence University during last year's cleaning, the study is the first full anatomical investigation on Michelangelo's masterpiece and debunks long-held assumptions that the 4.34-meter (14-foot)-high statue was out of proportion. "David is not really highly gifted, but he is totally normal. His penis measures 15 cm which, considering the height of the statue, corresponds to 6-7 cm in an adult," Gulisano told Discovery News. Copyright © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Stress; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6982 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WASHINGTON — Does having a low socioeconomic status (SES) lead to depression or does depression lead a person into poverty? According to a study that examined a database of 34,000 patients with two or more psychiatric hospitalizations in Massachusetts during 1994-2000, unemployment, poverty and housing unaffordability were correlated with a risk of mental illness. This finding is reported on in the current issue of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). "The poorer one's socioeconomic conditions are, the higher one's risk is for mental disability and psychiatric hospitalization," said author Christopher G. Hudson, Ph.D., of Salem State College. This was found regardless of what economic hardship or type of mental illness the person suffered. SES was assessed on the basis of community income, education and occupational status. The study considered economic stress as one of several possible explanations for the correlation between SES and mental illness, and this was determined by how much the local income income was below the federal poverty level, the rate of unemployment, and an index of rental housing unaffordability. © 2005 American Psychological Association

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 6981 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WASHINGTON -- Two new studies in the current issue of Behavioral Neuroscience present new evidence of how genes may foster two potentially harmful proclivities: one, to nicotine addiction; the other, to aggressively hostile behavior. Behavioral Neuroscience is published by the American Psychological Association (APA). First, behavioral geneticists at the University of Colorado compared the average daily nicotine consumption in mice. Co-author Jerry Stitzel, PhD, and his team found that mice with the "threonine" polymorphism (an alteration to a gene's DNA sequence) in a gene called Chrna4 consumed significantly more nicotine than mice with an alanine polymorphism in the same gene. The authors think that this threonine variation may allow these mice to tolerate higher nicotine levels before experiencing negative nervous-system side effects. Chrna4 (Cholinergic Receptor Nicotinic Alpha4) contains the instructions to build a protein that is part of a receptor that recognizes acetylcholine, a major neurotransmitter that plays a role in the brain's pleasure system and also aids learning and memory, sleep, control of muscle movement, heart rate, blood pressure and more. Because nicotine is chemically very similar to acetylcholine, it binds to the same receptors, including those with the protein made from Chrna4. Thus the nervous system responds to nicotine as if it were acetylcholine. The authors conclude that natural variations in Chrna4 could, by varying how the nicotine receptors works, result in animal-by-animal variation in nicotine tolerance. That may explain why in humans (the gene is found in essentially all animals), CHRNA4 polymorphisms are associated with nicotine dependence.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Aggression
Link ID: 6980 - Posted: 03.07.2005