By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL A Wisconsin teenager is the first human ever to survive rabies without vaccination, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday, after she received a desperate and novel type of therapy. Last month, doctors at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa, a suburb of Milwaukee, put the critically ill girl into a drug-induced coma and gave her antiviral drugs, although it is not clear which, if any, of the four medicines contributed to her surprising recovery. Dr. Charles Rupprecht of the disease control agency called the recovery "historic." But even the doctors who took care of the girl said the result would have to be duplicated elsewhere before the therapy could be considered a cure or a treatment. "You have to see this therapy repeated successfully in another patient," said Dr. Rodney Willoughby, the associate professor of pediatrics who prescribed the cocktail of medicines for the sick girl, Jeanna Giese, 15. "Until then, it is a miracle." Jeanna, of Fond du Lac, was bitten by a bat at a church service on Sept. 12. She did not visit a doctor and so was not vaccinated, as is standard medical practice for such an exposure. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 6485 - Posted: 11.25.2004

Numbers count for Cristina Tur. She eyes them going up, scrutinizes them going down. She rages when they don't change, weeps when they move in the wrong direction. Tur's not a stockbroker. Her fixation with figures comes from a lifetime of chronic dieting that's seen her bounce haphazardly from one eating plan to another. "Calorie count, South Beach diet, the one with the liquid diet, the one where you have to drink shakes, no carbs..." Tur lists these as some of the many eating plans she's toyed with. "Every year I try something different. It didn't work. It worked for a little. And then you try something else. It's because you want a magic pill." Gene-Jack Wang, a nuclear physician at Brookhaven National Laboratory, has found new evidence that the mere sight and smell of food can trigger an area in the brain—the orbitofrontal cortex—to light up in much the same way it does when substance abusers talk about their addictions, suggesting that overeating may be a biologically wired impulse in some. "The brain activation [we see with food]…we can consider that conditioned response that we're born with in order for us to survive," Wang says. © ScienCentral, 2000- 2004.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 6484 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bill Clinton has it, so does James Watson. George Bush doesn't have it, nor does Tony Blair. Exuberance is hard to pin down, though we know it when we see it. Now Kay Redfield Jamison has written a book about it. Jamison is the psychiatry professor who made headlines by daring to expose her own mental illness. So why is she now writing about the up side of life? And is exuberance always a good thing? Liz Else talked to her as America went to the polls We all think we know what we mean by exuberance. But what do you mean by it? Basically it comes from the Latin, "ex", out of, and "uberare", to be fruitful, to be abundant. So it's from the natural world, and it meant an overflowing of abundant fertility. Think how a pair of poppies, given the right conditions over seven years, will produce 820,000 million million million descendants. Or how the universe is thought to contain 1021 stars. It has become a word to describe overflowing joy and energy. I believe it is incomparably more important than we acknowledge. After all, if enthusiasm finds the opportunities and energy makes the most of them, then a mood that yokes the two has got to be formidable. Somehow exuberant people take in the world and act on it differently from the less lively and less engaged people. Also, exuberance is a very pleasurable state and in that pleasure is power. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 6483 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Michael Hopkin It's official: homing pigeons really can sense Earth's magnetic field. An investigation of their ability to detect different magnetic fields shows that their impressive navigation skills almost certainly relies on tiny magnetic particles in their beaks. The discovery seems to settle the question of how pigeons (Columba livia) have such an impressive 'nose for north'. Some experts had previously suggested that the birds rely on different odour cues in the atmosphere to work out where they are. But the latest findings suggest that they are using magnetic cues. The idea that pigeons' beaks contain tiny particles of an iron oxide called magnetite is not a new one, says Cordula Mora, who led the latest study at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. But the particles themselves are likely to be only a few micrometres across, and no one has ever seen them under the microscope. Mora's behavioural experiments therefore give the best indication yet that pigeons are aware of Earth's magnetic field. She and her colleagues taught the pigeons to discriminate between magnetic fields by placing them in a wooden tunnel with a feeder platform at either end and coils of wire around the outside. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 6482 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roxanne Khamsi A good brain needs lots of energy in order to function, and human brains are exceptionally good. Now geneticists have found that humans may also be exceptional in terms of the energy output of our cells, and are wondering whether this is linked to our intellectual prowess. Brains use more energy than one might expect. In humans this organ makes up only 2% of a person's body weight, on average. But it is estimated to account for about 20% of the energy used by the body at rest. One solution to providing more energy is simply to have more cells. In the development of the human brain, "the obvious difference that everyone talks about is the huge increase in size," says John Kaas, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. But there are limits to how much more power size can provide. Bigger brains come with additional overhead costs and problems with heat exchange. Something else must have helped to improve our brains. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Evolution; Intelligence
Link ID: 6481 - Posted: 06.24.2010

If you've ever been tempted to drop a friend who tended to freeload, then you have experienced a key to one of the biggest mysteries facing social scientists, suggests a study by UCLA anthropologists. "If the help and support of a community significantly affects the well-being of its members, then the threat of withdrawing that support can keep people in line and maintain social order," said Karthik Panchanathan, a UCLA graduate student whose study appears in Nature. "Our study offers an explanation of why people tend to contribute to the public good, like keeping the streets clean. Those who play by the rules and contribute to the public good will be included and outcompete freeloaders." This finding -- at least in part -- may help explain the evolutionary roots of altruism and human anger in the face of uncooperative behavior, both of which have long puzzled economists and evolutionary biologists, he said. "If you put two dogs together, and one dog does something inappropriate, the other dog doesn't care, so long as it doesn't get hurt," Panchanathan said. "It certainly wouldn't react with moralistic outrage. Likewise, it wouldn't experience elation if it saw one dog help out another dog. But humans are very different; we're the only animals that display these traits."

Keyword: Evolution; Emotions
Link ID: 6480 - Posted: 11.25.2004

Babies exposed to plenty of daylight are more likely to sleep better during the night, a study says. Researchers at Liverpool John Moores University found babies who were exposed to twice as much light between 12pm and 4pm became better sleepers. A group of 55 babies were monitored for three consecutive days at six, nine and 12 weeks old. The team also found that babies who slept well at six weeks were likely to be a good sleepers at 12 weeks. Report co-author Dr Yvonne Harrison said, from the School of Psychology at the university, said: "Sleep deprivation is a big problem for many new parents. "This research puts forward one theory that may help babies and parents get a good night's sleep, which is good news for everyone." She said one possible explanation for the link between light exposure and sleep is that higher light levels encourage the early development of the biological clock, which regulates a number of bodily functions, including the secretion of melatonin, an important factor in well-balanced sleeping patterns. Parents taking part in the study, which is published in the Journal of Sleep Research, were asked to continue their usual routines while a light monitor was attached to their pram or cot. A diary was also kept of their sleep and crying patterns. (C) BBC

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6479 - Posted: 11.24.2004

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR THE FACTS When ancient Greeks wanted to reassure guests that their wine had not been spiked with poison, they toasted to good health. While that may be less of a worry today, there remain hazards from indulging in too much alcohol - including, of course, hangovers. But one thing people who drink socially probably don't need to worry about is sacrificing brain cells in the process. The research indicates that adults who drink in moderation are not in danger of losing brain cells. The notion that alcohol snuffs out brain cells has been around for years. Many studies have linked drinking with mental deficits, and long-term damage from years of heavy drinking has been well documented. The developing brain is particularly vulnerable, some studies show, putting teenagers and unborn children at greatest risk. But Dr. Roberta J. Pentney, a former researcher at the State University of New York at Buffalo, found that alcohol disrupts brain function in adults by damaging message-carrying dendrites on neurons in the cerebellum, a structure involved in learning and motor coordination. This reduces communication between neurons, alters their structure and causes some of the impairment associated with intoxication. It does not kill off entire cells, however. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6478 - Posted: 11.24.2004

The human brain naturally produces and processes compounds closely related to those found in Cannabis sativa, better known as marijuana [see "The Brain's Own Marijuana," by Roger A. Nicoll and Bradley E. Alger. These compounds are called endogenous cannabinoids or endocannabinoids. As the journal Nature Medicine put it in 2003, "the endocannabinoid system has an important role in nearly every paradigm of pain, in memory, in neurodegeneration and in inflammation." The journal goes on to note that cannabinoids' "clinical potential is enormous." That potential may include treatments for pain, nerve injury, the nausea associated with chemotherapy, the wasting related to AIDS and more. Yet outdated regulations and attitudes thwart legitimate research with marijuana. Indeed, American biomedical researchers can more easily acquire and investigate cocaine. Marijuana is classified as a so-called Schedule 1 drug, alongside LSD and heroin. As such, it is defined as being potentially addictive and having no medical use, which under the circumstances becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Any researcher attempting to study marijuana must obtain it through the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The U.S. research crop, grown at a single facility, is regarded as less potent--and therefore less medicinally interesting--than the marijuana often easily available on the street. Thus, the legal supply is a poor vehicle for studying the approximately 60 cannabinoids that might have medical applications. © 1996-2004 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6477 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The world's most popular drug is something your kid could very well have in a can next to his computer right now—caffeine. "Caffeine is the world's most widely used mood-altering drug," says Roland Griffiths, professor of behavioral biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Some 80 percent of the population use caffeine on a daily basis. Caffeine is so available in our culture and society that many people consume coffee and soft drinks without the realization that they're actually involved in a drug self-administration behavior." If caffeine is a drug, then shouldn't stopping the intake of caffeine cause feelings of withdrawal? Griffiths analyzed medical studies of caffeine withdrawal dating back 170 years. "Sixty-six different studies had been done over time, most of which actually had been done in the last 10 years," he says. "We went about determining which symptoms of caffeine withdrawal were valid, which symptoms occur reliably, and then we determined what proportion of the population experiences these symptoms. And we asked the question, 'Are these symptoms clinically significant, that is, do people experience distress when they abstain from caffeine?'" © ScienCentral, 2000- 2004.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6476 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Durham, N.C. – Duke University Medical Center geneticists have discovered new proteins that help the olfactory system in mammals organize properly. Thus the proteins are key to the ability of mammals, including humans, to detect and respond appropriately to chemicals in the environment via their sense of smell. The finding in mice paves the way for scientists to unravel the underlying code that allows the brain to interpret smells, according to the researchers. Using genetic manipulations, the team found two proteins in mice that chaperone odorant receptors to the surface of olfactory nerves in the nose. Odorant receptors are the protein switches nestled in nerve cell membranes that trigger responses to specific volatile chemicals. The discovery of the chaperone proteins reveals the first molecular components of the olfactory machinery that promotes proper targeting of olfactory receptors to the neuronal cell surface, said Hiroaki Matsunami, Ph.D., assistant professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke. By taking advantage of the newly discovered components of the olfactory machinery, the Duke researchers have already begun tests to match the nearly 1,000 different mouse odorant receptors with the very specific chemical or chemicals to which they respond. © 2001-2004 Duke University Medical Center.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 6475 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers have discovered that individual fibroblast cells contain independent, self-sustaining circadian (ca. 24 hr) clocks. Circadian clocks are important for synchronizing many physiological and behavioral processes to the day/night cycle. For decades it has been known that a tiny cluster of brain cells known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is required for expression of circadian rhythms in mammals. When clock genes were identified in the late '90s, they were found to be expressed rhythmically not only in SCN but also in many other tissues. Some of these studies used the firefly luciferase gene, introduced into cells with regulatory elements from a clock gene, so that cell cultures emitted light with a circadian rhythm. However, peripheral tissue rhythms tended diminish after a few cycles in culture, suggesting that they might depend on the central nervous system's SCN to drive them. In the new work, performed by researchers at The Scripps Research Institute and Northwestern University, Dr. David Welsh and colleagues used bioluminescence imaging to monitor circadian rhythms of clock gene expression from individual rat or mouse fibroblasts. Robust rhythms of single cells persisted without diminishing for at least 1–2 weeks in culture. Cells were partially synchronized by medium change at the start of an experiment, but because of different circadian periods drifted out of phase after several days, leading the ensemble rhythm to diminish. Thus, even cells outside the brain contain bona fide circadian clocks.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 6474 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Women who are obese for many years are more likely to suffer brain cell loss linked to dementia, according to new research. The Swedish team followed 290 women over 24 years and found that women who were obese during this period were much more likely than slim women to show brain atrophy - the abnormal loss of neurons - by the end of the study. Deborah Gustafson and colleagues at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden measured the body mass index (BMI) of the women between 1968 and 1992. On their final visit the women – then aged between 70 and 84 – also underwent CT scans of their brains. The researchers found that almost half of the women showed brain cell death in the temporal lobes in 1992 and on average these women had a higher BMI – their height in metres, divided by the square of their weight in kilograms – than those who showed no brain cell loss. Brain shrinkage in this area is associated with Alzheimer’s disease and loss of cognitive function. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity; Alzheimers
Link ID: 6473 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Computer model will track, isolate facial expressions - Dan Fost, Chronicle Staff Writer Psychologists for years have studied every little tic and twitch of facial muscles, looking for insight into how people communicate. Now those scientists will get some help from computers -- the same type of high-powered machines that have created some of Hollywood's most dazzling special effects. A team of Canadian psychologists plans to use technology from Silicon Graphics Inc. to isolate facial patterns with precision. By doing so, the researchers hope to see how an expression might change with the twitch of an eyebrow -- or when that eyebrow is taken away. Much like in the Hollywood film "Polar Express," researchers will use three-dimensional scanners to measure, record and digitize every millimeter of a human face. Then, using the hardware and software provided by SGI, they'll produce an interactive model that can be easily manipulated. The simulated face will work in real time, which requires tremendous processing power, but will enable researchers to do things that would be impossible with human subjects. For instance, researchers could gauge people's reactions to one of the computer model's expressions, and then alter the expression ever so slightly -- removing the eyebrow twitch or a slight squint -- to see if the reaction or interpretation changes. ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 6472 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - A collection of drunken rats is helping University of North Carolina researchers understand how brains repair themselves after chronic drinking — and possibly find new ways to help alcoholics recover full mental capacity. Fulton T. Crews and Kimberly Nixon have discovered that heavy drinking slows the creation of new brain nerve cells, or neurons, in animals. Rats that have been intoxicated and then sobered up produce more than normal amounts of neurons. That might explain why the brains of rats with simulated alcoholism shrink during chronic drinking but grow after the abuse stops — just like the brains of alcoholic people. That growth is often accompanied in people by life-saving behavioral changes, such as the ability to understand how drinking harms them and their families. If that insight is tied to replenishing neurons, medicine may get a new way to speed healing among alcoholics. "More experiments are needed, but this is a first tantalizing step," said Antonio Noronha, director of the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's division of neuroscience and behavior. For decades, scientists thought that adult humans and other animals had a finite number of neurons. But brain stem cells producing neurons even in adults were discovered in 1997. Counting new cells made in living human brains is impossible. So Crews, who runs the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at UNC, asked Nixon in 2001 to find out how alcohol affects the production of new neurons in rats. Copyright © 2004 Yahoo! Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6471 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Chronic pain may permanently shrink the brain, US researchers believe. The Northwestern University team had previously shown patients with back pain had decreased activity in the same brain region called the thalamus. This area is known to be important in decision-making and social behaviour. The team's current study in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests some of the changes may be irreversible and render pain treatment ineffective. More research is needed, they say. If true, it makes it all the more important to treat pain early to prevent any permanent change, say Dr Vania Apkarian and colleagues. They scanned the brains of 26 patients with chronic back pain and 26 healthy people. The patients with chronic pain caused by damage to the nervous system showed shrinks in the brain by as much as 11% - equivalent to the amount of gray matter that is lost in 10-20 years of normal aging. The decrease in volume, in the prefrontal cortex and the thalamus of the brain, was related to the duration of pain. Every year of pain appeared to decrease gray matter by 1.3 cubic centimetres. What the researchers now need to find out is whether this loss is permanent or whether it can be reversed with treatment. Dr Apkarian said: "It is possible that some of the observed decreased gray matter shown in this study reflects tissue shrinkage without substantial neuronal loss, suggesting that proper treatment would reverse this portion of the decreased brain matter." (C)BBC

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 6470 - Posted: 11.23.2004

St. Paul, Minn. – Women who are obese throughout life are more likely to lose brain tissue, according to a study published in the November 23 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Loss of brain tissue has been linked to cognitive decline. Researchers in Sweden studied the relationship between body mass index and brain atrophy (loss of brain tissue) in 290 women. The women were born between 1908 and 1922 and had four follow-up examinations between 1968 and 1992. During the final exam, they had a computed tomography (CT) scan to measure for any loss of brain tissue. Body mass index (BMI) is a measure of body fat that shows weight adjusted for height. Overweight is a BMI of 25 to 30 kg/m2. Obesity is a BMI of 30 kg/m2 and above. An overweight or obese BMI was linked to a loss of tissue specifically in the temporal lobe. Nearly 50 percent (144) of the women had temporal atrophy. At the time of CT scan, their body mass index was an average of 27 kg/m2, which was 1.1 to 1.5 kg/m2 higher than the women without brain atrophy. Overall the women’s BMI increased over the 24-year period, but the increase was greater for those who lost tissue in the temporal lobe. The risk of atrophy increased 13 to 16 percent per 1.0 kg/m2 increase in BMI.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 6469 - Posted: 06.24.2010

For the first time, researchers have used human embryonic stem cells to create new insulating tissue for nerve fibers in a live animal model – a finding that has potentially important implications for treatment of spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis. Researchers at the UC Irvine Reeve-Irvine Research Center used human embryonic stem cells to create cells called oligodendrocytes, which are the building blocks of the myelin tissue that wraps around and insulates nerve fibers. This tissue is critical for maintenance of proper nerve signaling in the central nervous system, and, when it is stripped away through injury or disease, sensory and motor deficiencies and, in some cases, paralysis result. In this study, neurologist Hans Keirstead and colleagues at UCI and the Geron Corporation devised a novel technique that allows human embryonic stem cells to differentiate into high-purity, early-stage oligodendrocyte cells. The researchers then injected these cells into the spinal cords of mice genetically engineered to have no myelin tissue. After transplantation into mice, the early-stage cells formed into full-grown oligodendrocyte cells and migrated to appropriate neuronal sites within the spinal cord. More importantly, the researchers discovered the oligodendrocyte cells forming patches of myelin’s basic protein, and they observed compact myelin tissue wrapping around neurons in the spinal cord. These studies demonstrated that the oligodendrocytes derived from human embryonic stem cells can function in a living system. © Copyright 2002-2004 UC Regents

Keyword: Regeneration; Glia
Link ID: 6468 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JONATHAN MAHLER Looking back, Mark and Cheryl Miller would have done a lot of things differently with their 13-year-old son, Matt. They probably would never have left Lenexa, Kan. They would have sent him to a different school, and they certainly would have chosen a different therapist. But most of all, they wouldn't have given him Zoloft. ''It's not a pleasant thing living with the thought that you had a hand in your son's death,'' Mark Miller told me recently. ''Making him take those pills was done out of love for Matt, but it was still the wrong thing to do.'' We were on our way back from Mark and Cheryl's Wednesday-night Bible-study class. I was riding with Mark, who had come straight from the advertising agency where he works as a vice president and creative director. A young-looking 55, with neatly combed hair and wire-rimmed glasses, he was wearing a striped Polo button-down and pressed blue jeans. A few minutes later Mark eased his white Volvo into the garage of their home, a meticulously decorated two-story Tudor in Overland Park, Kan. The Millers moved here from Lenexa, like Overland Park a suburb of Kansas City, in the summer of 1996, though they'd been talking about relocating for years. They liked Lenexa, but Mark was doing well, and they could afford a bigger house in a more upscale neighborhood. Their new home was only 30 minutes away from their old one, but it meant a new school district for their two children. Their 15-year-old, Jenny, was going to be a freshman in high school and was nervous about the move. Her 12-year-old brother, Matt, a slight, fair-haired boy who wore skateboard-style clothing, was excited. As a Cub Scout, he had built the fastest pine-wood derby car in his age division, and he was looking forward to taking flying lessons at a flight school near their house when he turned 14. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6467 - Posted: 11.23.2004

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE Cheryl Schiltz vividly recalls the morning she became a wobbler. Seven years ago, recovering from an infection after surgery with the aid of a common antibiotic, she climbed out of bed feeling pretty good. "Then I literally fell to the floor," she said recently. "The whole world started wobbling. When I turned my head, the room tilted. My vision blurred. Even the air felt heavy." The antibiotic, Ms. Schiltz learned, had damaged her vestibular system, the part of the brain that provides visual and gravitational stability. She was forced to quit her job and stay home, clinging to the walls to keep from toppling over. But three years ago, Ms. Schiltz volunteered for an experimental treatment - a fat strip of tape, placed on her tongue, with an array of 144 microelectrodes about the size of a postage stamp. The strip was wired to a kind of carpenter's level, which was mounted on a hard hat that she placed on her head. The level determined her spatial coordinates and sent the information as tiny pulses to her tongue. The apparatus, called a BrainPort, worked beautifully. By "buzzing" her tongue once a day for 20 minutes, keeping the pulses centered, she regained normal vestibular function and was able to balance. Ms. Schiltz and other patients like her are the beneficiaries of an astonishing new technology that allows one set of sensory information to substitute for another in the brain. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Movement Disorders
Link ID: 6466 - Posted: 11.23.2004