It's a nightmare for the exhausted new mother--a constantly squalling infant. And if the baby can't calm down after a few months, it's a bad sign: A new study suggests that prolonged crying may be a sign of future behavioral problems. When newborns cry inexplicably for hours every day, it's called colic. But colic rarely persists beyond 3 months and is not associated with later ill effects. More persistent crying, however, may be a symptom of flawed neurological development, according to a paper in the November Archives of Disease in Childhood. Researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland, analyzed data from a study of normal full-term infants born in Norway and Sweden in the late 1980s. The babies were evaluated periodically in the first 13 months of life, and about 5 years later, 327 children--or 80% of the original sample--were given tests probing their health, IQs, motor abilities, and personalities. Of these, 63 were colicky, and 15 continued to be prolonged criers. The colicky infants showed no decrements on the later tests, but the criers' average IQ was 9 points below that of the other children. The criers also had worse hand-eye coordination and were more likely to be hyperactive or present discipline problems. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6365 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JAMES GORMAN Yet another species barrier has been broken. Chimpanzees have been videotaped with tool kits. Not just sticks, mind you, but three different kinds of sticks for different purposes, some modified (by chewing on the end, for instance) to make them more efficient. We've known for a while that some other species, like the great apes and crows, use rudimentary tools, but just as a few adjectives are not the same as a sonnet, one stick does not a tool kit make. I know what I'm talking about. For someone who doesn't do much work around the house, I have a lot of tools. I've always felt that this was a kind of tribute to my evolutionary heritage. Tool use is a defining characteristic of the human lineage and, I tell those who wonder why I can't use the wrenches we already have to fix the faucets, I'm every bit as human as all the other people I see shopping for pipe wrenches and pipe on Saturday morning. I have the regular hammers and screwdrivers and electric drills, of course, all of which I used extensively when I tried, over the course of the summer to rehang a screen door. I didn't succeed, but using tools is what makes you human. Nobody ever said you had to be good at it. I also have a variety of tools that are remnants of old habits and interests, like the vintage drawknives I bought on eBay when I was carving yew staves into long bows (a lot easier than hanging a screen door.) Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 6364 - Posted: 11.02.2004

By DENISE GRADY It happened without warning, early one day last summer as they prepared to go out. Gloria Rapport's husband raised his arm to her, fist poised. "He was very close to striking me," she said. What had provoked him? "Nothing," she said. "I asked him to get in the car." Mrs. Rapport's husband, Richard, 71, has Alzheimer's disease. His forgetfulness and confusion began about nine years ago, not long after they married. More recently, emotional troubles have loomed. Anxiety came first: he suddenly feared being left alone in the house. Outbursts of anger followed. The man she had always known to be kind and gentle could in an instant turn "cunning, nasty, aggressive, menacing," she said. "The behavioral changes I've seen are absolutely frightening," she said. "I understand now why so many families institutionalize someone, because I was afraid of him." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 6363 - Posted: 11.02.2004

Male animals tend to be pretty promiscuous and are more likely than their female counterparts to mate with members of other species. But a new study shows that male sailfin mollies produce more sperm when they are around females of their own species than when they're in the company of strangers. The findings suggest that a male's physiology can create a barrier to interspecies mating even when his behavior does not. New species arise when a group of animals becomes reproductively isolated: They no longer mate with closely related animals, or if they do, they don't produce fertile offspring. Scientists believe that one of the most important barriers keeping closely related species apart is mate choice: Most males simply stick to females of their own species. But some are not as picky; they will attempt to get it on with females of related species, especially if they live in close proximity. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Evolution; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6362 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Arline Kaplan Even though more than two out of five adult women and one out of five adult men experience sexual dysfunction in their lifetime, underdiagnosis occurs frequently. To increase recognition and care, multidisciplinary teams of experts recently published diagnostic algorithms and treatment guidelines. The recommendations emanated from the 2nd International Consultation on Sexual Medicine held in Paris from June 28 to July 1, 2003, in collaboration with major urology and sexual medicine associations. Psychiatrists were among the 200 experts from 60 countries who prepared reports on such topics as revised definitions of women's sexual dysfunction, disorders of orgasm and ejaculation in men, and epidemiology and risk factors of sexual dysfunction. Several committees' summary findings and recommendations were published recently in the International Society for Sexual and Impotence Research's inaugural issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Full text of the committees' reports is in Second International Consultation on Sexual Medicine: Sexual Medicine, Sexual Dysfunctions in Men and Women (Lue et al., 2004a). "The First [International] Consultation in 1999 was restricted to the topic of erectile dysfunction. The second consultation broadened the focus widely to include all of the male and female sexual dysfunctions. © 2004 Psychiatric Times. All rights reserved

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6361 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Barbara Geller, M.D., and Rebecca Tillman, M.S. It is clinically well established that adults can be hypersexual and that promiscuity and multiple marriages (without spousal death) are common manifestations of mania in adults. Some practitioners may be somewhat uncomfortable asking about these areas, but hopefully they are aware of the usefulness of covering these issues in psychiatric evaluations of adults. By contrast, hypersexuality is often not covered in psychiatric evaluations of children unless abuse is suspected, and it is likely that mental health care professionals are less comfortable covering this area with children than with adults. Available data, however, show that hypersexuality can be a manifestation of pediatric bipolar disorder (BD). Specifically, in a controlled, blinded study of 93 children with a prepubertal and early adolescent bipolar disorder phenotype, approximately 1% had a history of abuse but 43% were hypersexual (Geller et al., 2000). These data were based upon separate mother and child interviews using the Washington University in St. Louis Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (WASH-U-KSADS) to obtain hypersexuality ratings (Geller et al., 2001). Histories of abuse were obtained separately from parents and children using a comprehensive psychosocial battery (Geller et al., 2000). In addition, reports from pediatricians, family doctors, after-school personnel, school educators and guidance counselors were obtained. This sample of children provides strong support that hypersexuality in child mania occurs in the absence of abuse. © 2004 Psychiatric Times. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6360 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Judy Skatssoon, ABC Science Online — Coral reef fish don't grow up until they find a mate, and when they do, they mature into the opposite sex, a new Australian study shows. Fish who can't find a partner are doomed to die of old age without ever maturing, said PhD student Jean-Paul Hobbs, whose paper is published in the Royal Society of London journal Proceedings: Biological Sciences. Hobbs and colleagues from James Cook University in Townsville tested the hypothesis that the availability of a mating partner directly influenced maturation and sex determination in the coral-dwelling fish Gobiodon erythrospilus. "The juvenile gobies delayed maturing until they found an adult partner and then the sex they decided to be was opposite to that of the partner they found," Hobbs said. "We found fish that were nearly dying of old age and they still hadn't matured because they hadn't found a partner. So you don't want to be a loner if you're a gobie." Copyright © 2004 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6359 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Adults with nicotine dependence and/or psychiatric disorders consume 70 percent of all cigarettes smoked in the United States, according to results of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study reported in the November issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry (Volume 61). Based on the 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), the article provides the first national estimates among U.S. adults of the prevalence and co-occurrence of nicotine dependence and a broad array of other psychiatric disorders including alcohol and drug abuse and dependence, mood and anxiety disorders, and personality disorders as defined by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). Nicotine dependence is most prevalent among persons with current drug and alcohol use disorders (52.4 percent and 34.5 percent, respectively) and somewhat lower among persons with any mood or anxiety disorder (29.2 percent and 25.3 percent, respectively) and personality disorders (27.3 percent). Persons with a current psychiatric disorder--whether or not they are nicotine dependent--make up 30.3 percent of the population and consume 46.3 percent of all cigarettes smoked. Nicotine dependent persons with co-existing psychiatric disorders comprise only about 7 percent of the adult population but smoke about 34 percent of all cigarettes. "Until now, surprisingly little has been known about the comorbidity of nicotine dependence and other psychiatric disorders and its role in the national burden of smoking on health," said Ting-Kai Li, M.D., Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at NIH.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 6358 - Posted: 11.02.2004

Roxanne Khamsi The biologist Stephen Jay Gould famously proposed that if we could "rewind the tape" of evolution and play it again, chance would give rise to a world that was completely different from the one we live in now. But the concept that chance reigns supreme may ring less true when it comes to complex behaviours. A study of the similarities between the webs of different spider species in Hawaii provides fresh evidence that behavioural tendencies can actually evolve rather predictably, even in widely separated places. Todd Blackledge of the University of California, Riverside, and Rosemary Gillespie, of the University of California, Berkeley, studied species of Tetragnatha spiders on different Hawaiian islands. The spiders' webs vary significantly, with tissue-like 'sheet webs', disorganized cobwebs and spiral-shaped 'orb webs' as three of the most common types. Each species had its own characteristic type of web. But the scientists found that in several cases, separate species of Tetragnatha spiders on different islands constructed extremely similar orb webs, right down to the number of spokes, and the lengths and densities of the sticky spiral that captures bugs. Was this an example of similar environments producing the same complex behaviour, or did the spiders with corresponding webs share a common ancestor? ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 6357 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Seabirds called prions, which mate for life, find their nests by sniffing out their smelly partners, scientists say. The birds make their nests in deep burrows, which are very dark, so they cannot rely on any other sense to find them, Science magazine reports. The birds also actively avoid their own smell, which could be a way of making sure they do not breed with their kin. Although this use of smell has been observed in mammals, it has never before been seen in birds. Antarctic prions, Pachiptila desolata, are so-called tube-nosed seabirds. They are strictly monogamous, although they rarely get to spend any time with their partners. Instead they take it in turns to incubate eggs and find food. "All the shared life of the birds is inside the burrow because they don't stay together at sea - they just alternate on eggs," said co-author Francesco Bonadonna, of CNRS in Montpellier, France. Sometimes a prion will forage at sea for up to two weeks, before returning to the nest to begin a stint of incubation duty. When they fly in from sea, they have to reliably find their own nest among a medley of other nests. But sight is not much use because they tend to come home at night and their nests are submerged in deep burrows. "Their burrows are underground and really, really dark," said Dr Bonadonna. "They have nothing other than odour to find their way." (C)BBC

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6356 - Posted: 10.30.2004

by Dr Michael Fitzpatrick In his decision to publish in the Lancet in February 1998 the paper in which Andrew Wakefield suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, the editor Richard Horton played an important role in launching one of the great health scares of recent years (1). No doubt, as Dr Horton argues in his apologia for his role, the subsequent furore reflects many of the problems of contemporary society. But it raises a much more specific question: how did Dr Wakefield persuade a leading journal of medical science to publish a paper that was both bad science and damaging to public health? The Lancet's difficulties are not resolved by the 'partial retraction' of the Wakefield paper in February 2004 by ten of its signatories (but not including Dr Wakefield himself). This followed the revelation, by Brian Deer in The Sunday Times, that Dr Wakefield had failed to disclose a conflict of interests arising from his receipt of £55,000 from the legal aid board in pursuit of litigation against the manufacturers of MMR. Dr Wakefield should certainly have disclosed his interest, but the key defect of his study was not the fact that its lead author failed such a clear duty, but that the cases included in it were not randomly selected. Many parents brought their children to the Royal Free clinic because of their prior exposure to Dr Wakefield's theories and to the wider anti-MMR campaign (both had received national publicity in the preceding months). Dr Horton argues that, though Dr Wakefield's conflict of interest invalidated his central claim of a link between MMR and autism, his additional claim to have identified a new syndrome (later dubbed 'autistic enterocolitis') remained 'intact'. But the bias in the selection of cases meant that it was impossible to maintain that the results of investigating these dozen children were in any way characteristic of autistic children in general. © spiked 2000-2004 All rights reserved.

Keyword: Autism; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 6355 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Randy Dotinga By one account, the first lie in the history of the world came when Cain invented the "who, me?" defense and denied knowing anything about the murder of his brother, Abel. Ever since then, people have been trying to figure out how to detect when someone -- a spouse, a criminal, a president -- isn't telling the truth. Now, about a century into the scientific exploration of lying, American researchers are exploring lie-detection technologies that may banish polygraph machines to the history books. Today's the Day. At the University of Houston, a computer scientist is trying to uncover lies by measuring heat levels in the face. In South Carolina, a professor hopes she has found the key to deception in brain waves. Elsewhere, researchers are looking at everything from speech patterns to eye movements to "brain fingerprints." Success remains elusive, however, and no newfangled lie-detection machines appear ready for prime time. Skeptics, meanwhile, doubt that any technology will improve much on the mixed record of polygraph machines, which are often used in the United States to screen employees and test the truthfulness of criminal suspects. "A lot of people believe there is some particular reaction that you give when you're lying but not when you're telling the truth, but that's false," said David Lykken, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota. Studies show that polygraphs do a fairly effective job of detecting liars by picking up on stress levels, but they also produce "false positives" -- suggesting that a truth teller is lying -- and appear to be susceptible to manipulation by subjects. © Copyright 2004, Lycos, Inc.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 6354 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Birds are not renowned for their sense of smell. But new research shows that a species of seabird prefers the scent of its mate to those of other individuals in the colony. The odors may help the birds locate their burrows and, perhaps, even choose a partner. Each year, seabirds called Antarctic prions return to breeding colonies on sub-Antarctic islands with their lifelong mates. The pairs build shallow burrows and then split the duty of incubating the eggs, spending the rest of their time looking for food. Because prions can locate their own burrows among those of hundreds of neighbors in the middle of the night, researchers Francesco Bonadonna, an animal behaviorist at the French national research center CNRS in Montpellier, France, and Gabrielle Nevitt, a sensory ecologist at the University of California, Davis, began to suspect that they were using odor cues. To test their hypothesis, the pair put birds in a "Y"-shaped maze and placed cotton bags (originally used to transport the musky-scented prions) at the end of each tunnel, providing the birds with a choice of odor. The seabirds preferred the smell of their mates over odors from other prions in the colony. To ensure that the seabirds weren't just choosing the more familiar odor, the researchers then tested whether the prions would pick their own odor over that of another colony member. In that case, the prions avoided their own smell in favor of the other, more novel odor, the researchers report in the 29 October issue of Science. The results provide strong evidence that the prion's olfactory system is developed enough to identify their mates just based on smell, says Bonadonna, suggesting that they may also be able to sniff their way home. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6353 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An errant enzyme linked to bipolar disorder, in the brain's prefrontal cortex, impairs cognition under stress, an animal study shows. The disturbed thinking, impaired judgment, impulsivity, and distractibility seen in mania, a destructive phase of bipolar disorder, may be traceable to overactivity of protein kinase C (PKC), suggests the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Institute on Aging (NIA), and the Stanley Foundation. It explains how even mild stress can worsen cognitive symptoms, as occurs in bipolar disoder, which affects two million Americans. Abnormalities in the cascade of events that trigger PKC have also been implicated in schizophrenia. Amy Arnsten, Ph.D. and Shari Birnbaum, Ph.D. of Yale University, and Husseini Manji, M.D., of NIMH, and colleagues, report on their discovery in the October 29, 2004 issue of Science. "Either direct or indirect activation of PKC dramatically impaired the cognitive functions of the prefrontal cortex, a higher brain region that allows us to appropriately guide our behavior, thoughts and emotions," explained Arnsten. "PKC activation led to a reduction in memory-related cell firing, the code cells use to hold information in mind from moment-to-moment. Exposure to mild stress activated PKC and resulted in prefrontal dysfunction, while inhibiting PKC protected cognitive function."

Keyword: Stress; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 6352 - Posted: 10.30.2004

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Male bats with a natural talent for singing attract more female admirers, and some males and females even sing in secret, using sounds that are inaudible to humans and to other animals, two new studies of bats reveal. The studies, both published recently in the journal Animal Behavior, reveal that bat communication systems, as well as their social lives, are far more complex than thought. For the first study, biologists Susan Davidson and Gerald Wilkinson of the University of Maryland analyzed songs and other sounds produced by greater white-lined bats, Saccopteryx bilineata, located in Trinidad, in the West Indies. They also videotaped these bats in the wild to see how their calls and songs might influence behavior. Greater white-lined male bats sing what the researchers refer to as bat "love songs." Female bats of the species just produce short calls. Davidson and Wilkinson first determined that male songs consist of separate sounds, or mini tunes, within the overall vocalization. They classified these songs as being screechy, whiny, a combo screech-whine, short repeated notes, and long tonal sounds with some harmonics. Copyright © 2004 Discovery Communications Inc

Keyword: Hearing; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6351 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Dolphins have evolved surprisingly big brains over the last 47 million years, according to the largest fossil study ever done on the animals. The growth - which occurred in two spurts - may shed light on how humans became so brainy. Dolphins are famously bright, performing mental feats few other animals can, such as recognising themselves in mirrors. That intelligence is probably due to their exceptionally large brains - some dolphin species boast brain-to-body mass ratios second only to humans. But how they evolved such big brains has been a mystery. Now, a trio of researchers led by biologist Lori Marino at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, US, has tracked how dolphins evolved their big brains using the fossil record. After four years of scouring museum collections, the team turned up 66 fossilised skulls of dolphin ancestors - adding to only five studied previously. They probed the specimens' brain sizes with computed tomography (CT) scans and estimated the animals' body masses by analysing the size of bones around the base of the skulls. They studied the fossilised skulls - dating back 47 million years - along with 144 modern specimens, and found each creature’s encephalisation quotient (EQ). This measurement relates a specimen's brain mass to that of an average animal of similar size, so if an animal's EQ is less than 1, it has a smaller than average brain, while if it is greater than 1, it has a relatively large one. Humans are the brainiest of all creatures, with an EQ of 7. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution; Intelligence
Link ID: 6350 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Christen Brownlee Prescribing antidepressants to children and pregnant women is becoming increasingly common. However, it hasn't been clear whether these medications pose a risk to the developing brain. In a new study, researchers provide evidence that, in young mice, the antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) permanently alter the brain, resulting in a greater risk of depression and anxiety in adulthood. SSRIs seem to combat depression by affecting a molecule, called a transporter, on the surface of some brain cells. The molecule's main role is to absorb serotonin, a brain chemical that regulates mood. SSRIs probably prevent the transporter from taking in serotonin, thereby increasing the amount of free serotonin in the brain and lightening a person's disposition. Jay Gingrich and his colleagues at Columbia University had previously shown that mice engineered to be missing a gene for the serotonin transporter show anxiety and depression once they reach adulthood. The mood problems of these knockout mice were unexpected, Gingrich says, because when SSRIs inactivate the serotonin transporter in normal, mature mice, they ease depression symptoms, as they do in people. Copyright ©2004 Science Service.

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6349 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A transporter protein that vacuums up the neurotransmitter glutamate has a structure radically different from any other membrane protein studied to date. Researchers are excited about the studies because they hope they will further illuminate the activity of glutamate transporters, proteins that shuttle the critical neurotransmitter between nerve cells. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers who determined the first-ever three-dimensional structure of such a neurotransmitter transporter found that the protein possesses a bowl shape that inserts deep into the cell membrane. The structure shows that the bowl contains protein segments that behave like flippers in a pinball machine to trap glutamate and retrieve it into the neuron. Glutamate-triggered neurons play a central role in learning and memory. Their dysfunction has been implicated in a wide range of disorders, including schizophrenia, depression and stroke, said HHMI investigator Eric Gouaux, who led the research team. Gouaux and co-lead authors Dinesh Yernool and Olga Boudker at Columbia University published their findings in the October 14, 2004, issue of the journal Nature. © 2004 Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 6348 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Randy Dotinga SAN DIEGO -- Three decades after researchers first fathomed the unusual brain power of songbirds, scientists are devoting big chunks of their careers to finches and canaries, hoping to understand how they manage to be among the only species that learn how to make new sounds. Even though their brains range from just the size of a grain of rice to peanut-size, some types of songbirds can still pick up hundreds of songs during their lives. They improvise the songs like miniature jazz singers and even develop regional accents depending on where they live. Today's the Day. Scientists at this week's annual Society for Neuroscience convention in San Diego said research into bird songs can lead to greater understanding of human speech and the mysteries of how animals develop new neurons and memorize things. It helps that bird brains are small, leaving few places for singing abilities to hide. "We know the human brain is capable of this, but we don't know where to look for it," said Peter Marler, professor emeritus of neurobiology at the University of California at Davis, who helped pioneer the study of songbirds in the early 1970s. "We know virtually nothing about the detailed circuitry," © Copyright 2004, Lycos, Inc.

Keyword: Language; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6347 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Overactivity of protein kinase C (PKC), an enzyme that is implicated in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, markedly impairs higher brain functions in animals, according to a Yale study published Oct. 29 in Science. The research adds to mounting evidence that excessive activity of PKC may underlie the distractibility, impaired judgment, impulsivity, and disturbed thinking seen in bipolar disorder (also known as manic depressive illness), and in schizophrenia. The study also shows that exposure to mild stress can activate PKC, which may lead to worsening of symptoms in patients with these disorders. The findings may explain how upsetting events in the environment can lead to deterioration in higher brain function, and why patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder may be particularly susceptible to stress-induced dysfunction. PKC inhibitors may be useful in treating these illnesses, according to Amy Arnsten, associate professor, Department of Neurobiology at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study. "These new findings may also help us understand the impulsivity and distractibility observed in children with lead poisoning," Arnsten said. "Very low levels of lead can activate PKC, and this may lead to impaired regulation of behavior."

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 6346 - Posted: 10.29.2004