By Alex Stone Faced with a threat to their young, mothers often act as if they feel no fear. A new study shows why. Neurobiologist Stephen Gammie of the University of Wisconsin at Madison notes that levels of corticotropin-releasing hormone, a chemical that causes nervousness, are suppressed in mothers of newborn children. “During normal lactation, corticotropin-releasing hormone decreases,” Gammie says. “We hypothesized that if they had low fear and anxiety, that might increase the likelihood that they would defend their offspring.” To test this idea, he and his colleagues experimented on several groups of mice that had recently given birth, injecting them with different doses of the hormone. When faced with male intruders who menaced their brood, mothers with low levels of corticotropin-releasing hormone confronted the threat with ferocious displays of hostility. In contrast, those who received high doses of the hormone quavered in their cages. Abnormal levels of the hormone have been linked to mood disorders in humans; Gammie hopes his research might help explain why some mothers suffer postpartum depression, and in rare cases even neglect their infants after giving birth. © 2004 The Walt Disney Company.

Keyword: Aggression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 6521 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A successful method for healing spinal injuries in dogs has been developed by Purdue University researchers, offering hope for preventing human paralysis. Lab tests have shown that an injection of a liquid polymer known as polyethylene glycol (PEG), if administered within 72 hours of serious spinal injury, can prevent most dogs from suffering permanent spinal damage. Even when the spine is initially damaged to the point of paralysis, the PEG solution prevents the nerve cells from rupturing irrevocably, enabling them to heal themselves. "Nearly 75 percent of the dogs we treated with PEG were able to resume a normal life," said Richard Borgens, Mari Hulman George Professor of Applied Neuroscience and director of the Center for Paralysis Research in Purdue's School of Veterinary Medicine. "Some healed so well that they could go on as though nothing had happened." The research, performed at Purdue, Indiana University—Purdue University Indianapolis, and Texas A&M University, appears in the December issue of the Journal of Neurotrauma.

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 6520 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---For Marcel Proust, the taste of a madeleine conjured remembrance of the distant past. In today's multi-tasking, hyper-speed world, it can be a trick to remember what we did yesterday. But a new method of reconstructing the previous day's activities not only helps people remember how they spent their time, it also captures how they really felt about their activities. The technique, described in the Dec. 3 issue of Science, provides insight into what people actually enjoy and what kinds of factors affect how happy we are with our lives. Some of the findings confirm what we already know while others are counter-intuitive. The researchers assessed how people felt during 28 types of activities and found that intimate relations were the most enjoyable, while commuting was the least enjoyable. More surprisingly, taking care of their children was also among the less enjoyable activities, although people generally report that their children are the greatest source of joy in their lives. "When people are asked how much they enjoy spending time with their kids they think of all the nice things---reading them a story, going to the zoo," said University of Michigan psychologist Norbert Schwarz, a co-author of the Science article. "But they don't take the other times into account, the times when they are trying to do something else and find the kids distracting. When we sample all the times that parents spend with their children, the picture is less positive than parents expect. On the other hand, we also find that people enjoy spending time with their relatives much more than they usually assume."

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 6519 - Posted: 12.03.2004

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Researchers at Northwestern University have discovered a molecular mechanism -- a tiny protein attacking nerve cells -- that could explain why the brain damage in early Alzheimer's disease results in memory loss and not other symptoms such as loss of balance or tremors. The research team, led by William L. Klein, professor of neurobiology and physiology, found that toxic proteins, called "amyloid ß-derived diffusible ligands" (ADDLs, pronounced "addles"), from the brain tissue of individuals with Alzheimer's disease specifically attack and disrupt synapses, the nerve cell sites responsible for information processing and memory formation. These results, which show that only particular neurons and synapses are targeted by the neurotoxins, were published Nov. 10 in the Journal of Neuroscience. An understanding of how ADDLs disrupt synapses without killing neurons could lead to the development of new therapeutic drugs capable of reversing memory loss in patients who are treated early, in addition to preventing or delaying the disease. "Memory starts at synapses, so it was probable that Alzheimer's disease would be a synapse failure," said Klein. "Our work, which shows that ADDLs bind with great specificity to synapses, is the first demonstration of that.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 6518 - Posted: 12.02.2004

By ANDREW POLLACK Men have Viagra and other pills to fight sexual impotence. Now women might soon have something roughly equivalent. Procter & Gamble will try today to persuade a federal advisory panel to recommend approval of the first drug to increase a woman's sex drive. The company plans to tell the committee, which advises the Food and Drug Administration, that the drug Intrinsa increases the sexual desire of women and the frequency with which they have "satisfying" sex. Some experts say approval of Intrinsa would bring a new era in the handling of women's sexual problems. "It's a big breakthrough in acknowledging there are medical aspects to sexual dysfunction in women," said Jennifer R. Berman, director of the Female Sexual Medicine Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a consultant to Procter & Gamble. "It's not all in our heads." But Intrinsa might not sail smoothly toward a positive recommendation from the advisory committee, which will meet in Gaithersburg, Md. The F.D.A.'s own staff, in its review of the data, questioned whether the benefits of Intrinsa were "clinically meaningful" because the drug increased the number of times women had satisfying sex by only once a month compared with a placebo. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 6517 - Posted: 12.02.2004

By IAN AUSTEN CROSSING busy roads can be a challenge for people with good vision. For blind people, it is a perilous activity. "I know a number of blind people who have been hit by cars over the last year while crossing roads," said Jay Leventhal, the editor in chief of AccessWorld, an online technology magazine published by the American Foundation for the Blind. While American cities are, in Mr. Leventhal's opinion, generally poorly equipped to deal with blind pedestrians, some technologies have been introduced in recent years to remedy that situation. Most notably, San Francisco, New York and some smaller cities have equipped traffic signals with what Mr. Leventhal calls "chirping birds," audio versions of green and red lights. Now, researchers in Japan have developed a software system for detecting crosswalks that may help the blind when crossing streets. The system, developed by Tadayoshi Shioyama and Mohammad Shorif Uddin at the Kyoto Institute of Technology, takes images of the street with a camera; the software then determines if there is a painted crosswalk in the image. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 6516 - Posted: 12.02.2004

By Ceci Connolly, Washington Post Staff Writer Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found. Those and other assertions are examples of the "false, misleading, or distorted information" in the programs' teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. In providing nearly $170 million next year to fund groups that teach abstinence only, the Bush administration, with backing from the Republican Congress, is investing heavily in a just-say-no strategy for teenagers and sex. But youngsters taking the courses frequently receive medically inaccurate or misleading information, often in direct contradiction to the findings of government scientists, said the report, by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a critic of the administration who has long argued for comprehensive sex education. © 2004 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6515 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Agency Reneges on Guidelines Worked Out for Narcotics By Marc Kaufman, Washington Post Staff Writer An extensive effort to ease tensions between physicians who specialize in treating pain and the Drug Enforcement Administration over the use of morphine-based painkillers has backfired -- leaving many pain doctors and patients more fearful than before that they could be arrested for practicing what they consider good medicine. The DEA triggered the new impasse this month when it published a statement clarifying its position on a number of issues central to pain medicine. The document discusses when a doctor is at risk of being investigated for alleged prescription drug diversion, whether patients with known drug problems can ever be prescribed narcotic painkillers and whether doctors can give patients prescriptions to be filled on a future date. On all these issues, the new DEA position is at odds with a set of guidelines negotiated over several years by DEA officials and a group of leading pain-management experts. Those guidelines were posted on the agency's Web site in August as part of an effort to reassure doctors who properly prescribe narcotics, but several weeks later the document was abruptly removed and described by the agency as inaccurate and unofficial. © 2004 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6514 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kelly Hearn, AlterNet. If you haven't tried it yet, you've doubtless seen it on the shelves of your local natural foods store or on the drink menu of your favorite coffeehouse. For many people, a strong-tasting, South American tea-like drink called yerba mate has replaced their daily cup of joe. But along with mate's new popularity in the U.S. comes a number of snake-oily claims made by the growing number of companies that sell it. Consumed centuries ago by Guarani Indian tribes in Paraguay (and later perfected by Spanish colonizers and Jesuit priests), yerba mate is widely considered to be a good natural stimulant that may be healthier than coffee, due to a unique combination of alkaloids and relatively small caffeine content. Critics, however, say rising U.S. sales to fad dieters and health food junkies overplay such benefits, offering consumers false science and overblown claims about the drink's chemical consistency and physiological benefits. Controversy accompanies vendor claims that mate contains not caffeine, but a safer chemical called mateine, as its major psychoactive drug. Ma-Tea, a mate importer based in Atlanta, Ga., and Noborders.net, are two examples of companies that advertise their product with a commonly found quote attributed to Dr. Jose Martin, director of the National Institute of Technology in Paraguay: "New research and better technology have shown that while mateine has a chemical consistency similar to caffeine, the molecular binding is different." © 2004 Independent Media Institute.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6513 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new technique could soon help alleviate some of the most debilitating symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Scientists hope the process, in which gentle shocks were applied to the surface of the brain in baboons, could be a dramatic improvement over the more extreme and complex surgical treatments that are currently the only recourse for patients with the worst symptoms. In Parkinson's patients, a depletion of the neurotransmitter dopamine causes neurons in the basal ganglia to fire abnormally. This decreases the activity of neurons in the motor cortex and leads to a host of problems including slowness of movement, rigidity, and tremors. Although most patients benefit from drugs that increase the levels of dopamine in the brain, others require a complex treatment known as deep brain stimulation, in which surgeons implant a pacemaker-like device that delivers pulses of electricity to the basal ganglia. The procedure can be highly effective, although its use is limited by the difficulties in placing electrodes properly in such tiny regions located deep within the brain. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 6512 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Genes exert a strong influence over how nice - or socially responsible - humans are, a new study suggests. But contrary to other studies on personality traits, it suggests upbringing also plays a major role. Philippe Rushton, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, asked 322 pairs of twins to rate themselves on a standardised questionnaire which measured social responsibility - or altruism. Identical twins share 100% of their genes while fraternal twins share 50%. By looking at how the sets of twins differ from each other, researchers can work out the comparative importance of nature and nurture in the development of different traits. Earlier investigations of personality traits - including antisocial behaviour or delinquency - show a strong genetic contribution. Rushton’s study echoed this, with genes underscoring about 42% of socially responsible behaviour, such as voting, keeping promises and honouring commitments. “I think that the implication is that goodness is somewhat inherent in people. We all join groups and we all want to do the right thing by our group. I mean, there’s even honour among thieves,” says Rushton. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 6511 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Faces produce a particular resonance of recognition, even in the youngest infants, who respond to the sight of a face almost from birth. While neurobiologists have known that a particular area of the brain, called the fusiform face area (FFA), lights up with activity when we see a face--and even that the FFA is necessary for us to recognize faces--there is controversy over what kind of processing the area is doing. Now, Galit Yovel and Nancy Kanwisher have tackled two central questions with one set of experiments: the nature of processing that occurs in the FFA and whether the FFA is "domain specific," that is, exclusively involved in face perception, or whether the area is engaged in more general spatial processing of visual features. Their conclusions are that the FFA extracts configural information about faces rather than processing spatial information on the parts of faces. Also, their studies indicated that the FFA is exclusively involved in face recognition. The researchers' experiments combined both functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral studies of subjects as they performed recognition tasks. In the widely used technique of fMRI, harmless magnetic fields and radio signals are used to measure brain activity as subjects perform tasks.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 6510 - Posted: 12.02.2004

Michael Hopkin Using cannabis during adolescence or early adulthood increases the risk of developing psychotic symptoms, according to a study that tracked almost 2,500 young people. Crucially, those who are already predisposed to such problems are at a disproportionately greater risk when using the drug. Psychiatrists found that those using cannabis have, on average, a 6% greater chance of suffering psychotic symptoms such as schizophrenia, delusions and paranoia, compared with those who don't take the drug. But for the 10% of people who are already vulnerable to such problems, such as those with a family history of schizophrenia, this figure leaps to 25%. What's more, these figures depend on the level of drug intake, particularly for those already in danger, says Jim van Os of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who led the study. "If you are vulnerable, then the more cannabis you use, the greater your risk of psychosis," he told a press conference in London on 1 December. Overall, his team found that volunteers who were predisposed to mental problems and frequently smoked cannabis had roughly a 50% chance of suffering psychotic symptoms within the four years of the study, which took place in Germany. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 6509 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Discrimination is being blamed for high rates of mental health problems amongst gay men and lesbians, a study suggests. A survey of 1,285 homosexual and bisexual men and women found just under a third had attempted suicide. Just over 40% had had problems such as anxiety and sleep disturbance, the Imperial College researchers said. The British Journal of Psychiatry study said there was a "likely link" with discrimination such as having been bullied at school or a recent attack. The researchers said their study was the first to actually examine the potential effect of discrimination on the mental health of people who were homosexual or bisexual. Eighty-three per cent of respondents said they had experienced either damage to property, personal attacks or verbal insults in the last five years, or insults and bullying at school, with many attributing these experiences to their sexuality. The survey found that 42% of the gay men, 43% of lesbians and 49% of bisexual men and women had a clinically recognised mental health problem. In addition to anxiety and sleep disturbance, these also included panic attacks, depressive moods or thoughts, problems with memory or concentration, compulsive behaviour or obsessive thoughts. Around the same numbers also reported self-harming. However, no higher levels of more severe depression and psychosis were seen amongst those surveyed. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stress; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6508 - Posted: 12.01.2004

Evangelicals see flaws in Darwinism Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer Dover, Pa. -- The way they used to teach the origin of the species to high school students in this sleepy town of 1,800 people in southern Pennsylvania, said local school board member Angie Yingling disapprovingly, was that "we come from chimpanzees and apes." Not anymore. The school board has ordered that biology teachers at Dover Area High School make students "aware of gaps/problems" in the theory of evolution. Their ninth-grade curriculum now must include the theory of "intelligent design," which posits that life is so complex and elaborate that some greater wisdom has to be behind it. The decision, passed last month by a 6-to-3 vote, makes the 3,600-student school district about 20 miles south of Harrisburg the first in the United States to mandate the teaching of "intelligent design" in public schools, putting it on the front line of the growing national debate over the role of religion in public life. The new curriculum, which prompted two school board members to resign, is expected to take effect in January. The school principal, Joel Riedel, and teachers contacted by The Chronicle refused to comment on the changes. The idea of intelligent design was initiated by a small group of scientists to explain what they believe to be gaps in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which they say is "not adequate to explain all natural phenomena. " ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 6507 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Honey bees are famous for their highly structured societies in which each individual plays a well-defined role. But how do they reorganize their workforce in response to changing needs? A new study shows that workers regulate the number of foragers using pheromones that arrest development in young bees. Worker honey bees begin their lives as cell-cleaners, then advance up the ranks to become nurses and then food storers, finally graduating to foraging and colony defense at 2 to 3 weeks. The transition to foraging is associated with hormonal and structural changes in the brain and increased expression of foraging genes (ScienceNOW, 10 October 2003 ), but what triggers these changes is not known. Scientists suspected that old bees hold back the development of young bees through some chemical means, as past experiments have shown that this happens only when they can touch each other. Isabelle Leoncini, a graduate student at the University of Avignon, France, and Gene Robinson, an entomologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, set out to find the mystery substance. They and their colleagues found that levels of a fatty acid compound called ethyl oleate, a component of a brood pheromone that inhibits behavioral development, were about 30 times higher in the crops (honey stomachs) of foragers than in nurses. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 6506 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A group of researchers has re-created with remarkable accuracy part of the genome of the common ancestor of all placental mammals, a small shrew-like creature that prowled the forests of what is now Asia more than 80 million years ago. By comparing DNA sequences of 19 species of existing mammals, including humans, the researchers have reconstructed a large segment of DNA in the species from which all of today's placental mammals arose. They estimate that the reconstruction is 98 percent accurate. The project, which was led by David Haussler, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, Santa Cruz, based their reconstruction efforts around a region of the genome that covers about 1.1 million bases flanking the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene. That region of the genome has been sequenced in a large number of species as part of a comparative sequencing program being conducted by the National Institutes of Health. Coauthors of the article, which will be published in the December 2004 issue of Genome Research, are Mathieu Blanchette of McGill University, Eric Green of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and Webb Miller of Pennsylvania State University. When geneticists hear that most DNA from the genome of a species extinct for many millions of years can be re-created with 98 percent accuracy, “jaws occasionally drop,” said Haussler. “It sounds implausible. But there's enough information to reconstruct the ancestral genome on the basis of mammals that live today. We just need to sequence the genomes of these living mammals.” The reconstructed ancestral genome will offer an invaluable vantage point from which to watch evolution at work. © 2004 Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Keyword: Evolution; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 6505 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Michael Hopkin A vocabulary analysis of the final book by British novelist Iris Murdoch reveals the early stages of the Alzheimer's disease that killed her, neuroscientists have found. The discovery shows that even before she was diagnosed with the disease, her work betrayed the subtle signs of her condition. The vocabulary of Jackson's Dilemma, published shortly before Murdoch was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 1995, is less rich than that of an earlier work The Sea, The Sea, published at the height of her powers in 1978. A team of British researchers made the discovery by using text-analysis software to compare the variety of words used in three of her novels. The language is richest in The Sea, The Sea, which contains many rare and obscure words, the researchers report in the online version of the journal Brain1. What's more, the rate at which new words are introduced is greater in this work and in Murdoch's 1954 first novel, Under the Net, than in Jackson's Dilemma. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Alzheimers; Language
Link ID: 6504 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Mary Carmichael Newsweek - To say that Aplysia Californicus is one of nature's least glamorous beasts would be too kind. A hermaphroditic marine snail with mottled purple skin, it keeps to itself, responding to disturbances by emitting a murky fluid that stains the water around it. Its "brain," if you can call it that, is stunningly simple, with only a few thousand oversize neurons. It is not, in short, a likely candidate for glory in the animal kingdom. But a few years from now, much of the baby-boom generation may be greatly indebted to this unprepossessing little creature. Aplysia may look homely, but to scientists hoping to develop memory-enhancing medicine, it is a thing of beauty. Thanks to the neurological research of Nobel laureate Eric Kandel and others, Aplysia's minimal nervous system is helping scientists to make sense of how memory works on the biochemical level. The molecules of memory in sea slugs, it turns out, aren't that different from some of those in humans. They are now one of the many inspirations for drugs that may someday ward off the forgetfulness that plagues so many people as they grow older. As Americans' average age creeps upward, the search for medicines that will keep them sharp is accelerating. "We're all very, very avidly grinding up cells trying to get at the molecules," says Dr. Scott Small of Columbia University Medical Center. No pill to improve memory, aside from alternative remedies of dubious effectiveness, is currently on the market. But several small biotech companies are launching drugs grounded in the latest research, with a few already in the early stages of clinical trials that could be finished in as little as "two years, if we're lucky," says Kandel, who is now at CUMC and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Some of the most promising candidates have their roots in Aplysia studies. Others take their cues from even more improbable sources like the molecular consequences of smoking, focusing on some of the same receptors that nicotine targets. (Who knew it had benefits?) "These are very exciting times for treating memory loss," says Steven Siegelbaum, a neuroscientist at CUMC and HHMI. And with trials soon to yield results, they're about to get even more exciting. © 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 6503 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In contrast to people who do not have autism, people with autism remember letters of the alphabet in a part of the brain that ordinarily processes shapes, according to a study from a collaborative program of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health. The study was conducted by researchers in the NICHD Collaborative Program of Excellence in Autism (CPEA) at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. It supports a theory by CPEA scientists that autism results from a failure of the various parts of the brain to work together. In autism, the theory holds, these distinct brain areas tend to work independently of each other. The theory accounts for observations that while many people with autism excel at tasks involving details, they have difficulty with more complex information. The study and the theory are the work of Marcel Just, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Nancy Minshew, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and their colleagues. The study is scheduled for on-line publication November 29 in the journal Neuroimage, at http://www.sciencedirect.com. "This finding provides more evidence to support a promising theory of autism," said Duane Alexander, M.D., Director of the NICHD. "If confirmed, this theory suggests that therapies emphasizing problem solving skills and other tasks that activate multiple brain areas at the same time might benefit people with autism."

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 6502 - Posted: 12.01.2004