High stress levels during infancy and early childhood can lead to the poor development of communication zones in brain cells – a condition found in mental disorders such as autism, depression and mental retardation. These are the findings of Dr. Tallie Z. Baram and her collaborators at the UC Irvine College of Medicine, Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc., and the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. For the first time, the researchers have identified how increased amounts of a key messenger for stress, the neuropeptide CRH, can inhibit the normal growth of dendrites, which are branch-like protrusions of neurons that send and receive messages from other brain cells. The researchers believe CRH ultimately may be responsible for these poorly developed zones in brain cells. Results of their study appear in the current online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “These findings may prove to be highly relevant for understanding the origins of several human brain disorders, and they also point to some potential preventive treatments,” said Baram, the Danette Shepard Chair in Neurological Studies. “The activation of stress hormones and molecules seems to initiate a complex cascade of brain effects that is related to depression and dementia. This study reveals a novel role of CRH in this cascade.” © Copyright 2002-2004 UC Regents

Keyword: Stress; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6281 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The living arrangements of parents at the time a baby is conceived may play a role in determining its sex, research suggests. A US study found parents who were married or living together before conception were slightly more likely to have a boy than those who were not. The study, by the US National Bureau of Economic Research, is based on data from 86,436 births. Details are published in Proceedings of The Royal Society. Overall, the study found that 51.5% of babies born to couples living together at the time of conception were boys, compared to 49.9% among parents who were not. Although this might seem like a small difference, it is actually statistically highly significant when considered across a whole population. When the researchers looked at brothers and sisters, they found that couples who were living together before conception were 14% more likely to have a male child than when they were not. The researchers say their finding could explain the fall in the proportion of male births in some developed countries over the past 30 years. Previous research has suggested that women who are not in stable, monogamous relationships might be less likely to give birth to boys. There are reports dating back to the 19th Century of a lower percentage of boys being born to women who were not married. And studies in modern Kenya have found a similar trait among polygynously married women. Male embryos are less robust than their female counterparts, and so require a greater degree of nurturing through pregnancy if they are to survive to full term. It may be that a woman who is in a stable relationship may be in a better position to provide this care. (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 6280 - Posted: 10.20.2004

Emma Marris She sees colours emanating like haloes from her friends and foes. Blocks of colour form in her mind when looking at names of acquaintances, or even at words like 'love' and 'hate'. And no, she will not read your aura for a low introductory fee. She is not a charlatan, or a psychic - she's a synaesthete. People with synaesthesia, perhaps one in 2,000 by conservative estimates, get two-for-one sensory experiences. They feel music, taste art, and often see colours around words or things. A new case study now raises the possibility that cases like this are the origin of the new-age belief in 'auras', a coloured emanation of energy that can be seen only by the spiritually in-tune. G.W. is a young woman who sees colours around words or things only when the object has an emotional association for her. Many synaesthetes see letters as coloured, for example in the word 'love', 'l' might be green, 'o' might be cream-yellow, 'v' might be crimson, and 'e' royal blue. But instead G.W. sees the whole word 'love' as pink or orange because it is a positive word. She sees the word 'James', or James himself, as pink for the same reason: she likes him. Her case is described by Jamie Ward, a psychologist at University College London in the latest issue of Cognitive Neuropsychology1. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 6279 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roger Dobson discovers Take a 50-year-old IQ test and it's likely that you will emerge a genius. In fact, most of the population would almost certainly be classed as super-intelligent if they were scored on tests originally set half a century ago. "If people taking an IQ test today were scored with the norms of their grandparents' performances 50 years ago, more than 90 per cent of them would be classified as geniuses, while, if our grandparents were scored today, most of them would be classed as borderline mentally retarded," says Dr Stephen Ceci, who is professor of developmental psychology at Cornell University. The reason is that average IQ has increased around 20 points with every generation over the last 60 or so years, an increase that has been seen in more than a dozen countries, including the United Kingdom, United States, Japan, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Just why is unclear. Genetic factors, better-educated parents, more sophisticated toys, television and computers have all been given the credit, but with little supporting evidence. ©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.

Keyword: Intelligence
Link ID: 6278 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By SALLY SATEL, M.D. On February 1999, Dr. Frank Fisher, a general practitioner in Shasta County, Calif., was arrested by agents from the California state attorney general's office and charged with drug trafficking and murder. The arrest was based on records indicating that Dr. Fisher had been prescribing high doses of narcotic pain relievers to his patients, five of whom died. He lost his home and his medical practice and served five months in jail before it was discovered that the patients had died from accidents or from medical illnesses, not from the narcotics he prescribed. All charges were dropped last year, and Dr. Fisher now has his medical license back. Yet his ordeal lingers as a cautionary tale of what can happen to doctors who treat pain aggressively. Over the last decade or so, pain specialists and patient advocates have diligently educated doctors about the undertreatment of persistent and debilitating pain. But as physicians have expanded their use of opiate painkillers like oxycodone and hydrocone, the abuse and diversion of the drugs has also increased. This, in turn, has led the Drug Enforcement Administration to intensify its scrutiny of physicians. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6277 - Posted: 10.19.2004

Sitting on a couch is Melissa, a woman in her mid-20s who has just taken 125 mg of methyllenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), or ecstasy, in a glass of juice. Sitting in a rocking chair to the left of Melissa is licensed psychotherapist Dr. Jane, who will work intensely with her patient over the next few hours, as Melissa's brain bathes in the surplus neurochemicals brought on by the MDMA. Melissa and her therapist aren't part of any currently approved research. They consider themselves to be conscientious, law-abiding citizens, but have decided to augment traditional psychotherapy with what the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency currently classifies as a Schedule I substance – an illegal drug. But, illegal or not, Dr. Jane (not her real name) has a rationale for using this drug with her patient: MDMA eases anxiety surrounding traumatic events, allowing them to be recalled with extensive clarity, then amplified by a desire to discuss them, perhaps for the first time in the patient's life. © 2004 Independent Media Institute.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6276 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Method may help halt A-T, cancer, other genetic diseases UCLA scientists have devised a novel way to repair one of the genetic mutations that cause ataxia-telangiectasia, (A-T), a life-shortening disorder that devastates the neurological and immune systems of one in 40,000 young children. Reported Oct. 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the findings could hold far-reaching implications for treating A-T, cancer and other genetic diseases. Often misdiagnosed as cerebral palsy, A-T usually strikes children before age 2 and confines them to a wheelchair by age 10. Many lose their ability to speak and die in childhood. One in three children also develop lymphoma or leukemia. Adults who carry the mutated A-T gene (ATM), including up to 15 percent of breast-cancer patients, are eight times more likely to develop cancer than the general population. Dr. Richard Gatti, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and Chih-Hung Lai, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, created a new strategy for tricking the ATM gene into overlooking certain types of mutations called premature termination codons (PTCs). "PTCs are like irregular stop signs located in the middle of the block," explained Gatti. "They stop traffic before it reaches the intersection. We made these stop signs invisible, so traffic continues until it sees the proper stop sign at the end of the corner."

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 6275 - Posted: 10.19.2004

Transplantation of human brain cells corrected involuntary muscle spasms in rats with ischemic spinal cord injury, according to research published online October 12 and in print October 19, 2004 in the European Journal of Neurosciences by investigators at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. Ischemic spinal cord injury, caused by reduced blood flow to the spinal cord, occurs in 20 to 40 percent of the several hundred patients each year in the U.S. who undergo surgery to repair an aneurysm, or sac-like widening of the aorta, the main artery that leaves the heart. A subpopulation of patients with ischemic spinal cord injury develop a prominent muscle spasticity, or jerkiness of the legs and lower body, due to the irreversible loss of specialized spinal cord cells that control local motor function. During a 12-week period in which the animals were followed, the UCSD team found that rats receiving the brain, or neuronal cell transplants displayed a progressive recovery of motor function and a decrease in spasticity in the lower extremities over a period of several weeks following the injections. Fifty percent of the animals experienced a significant improvement in motor function. In contrast, the “control” rats that did not receive transplants exhibited no improvement in motor function or spasticity. A post-mortem study of the animals showed a robust growth of neurons and an increase in neurotransmitters in the spinal cords of rats that received the transplanted neuronal cells.

Keyword: Regeneration; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 6274 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The poetry in Lee L.'s voice as he describes his great love is hypnotic. "I loved Crystal," he gushes. Lee's not speaking of a person, but methamphetamine, known by its street name, Crystal Meth. "It gave me a sense of power. It made me feel hungry. It made me feel sexual. It made me feel virile. It was like all of the switches in my body and in my brain felt like they finally got turned on." Lee—a 42-year-old composer who asked that his last name not be used in keeping with his involvement in the twelve-step program, New York Crystal Meth Anonymous—hunted down the drug as the days dragged between runs, even though he knew it was doing considerable bodily damage. "The physical body collapses a little every time, certainly in my case, every time that I used," he recalls. "The reward that it got was it hit upon a pleasure center in the brain." For the first time, scientists have seen exactly which brain areas in the recovering methamphetamine addict change in the immediate days after they begin recovery. Edythe London, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, along with her colleagues, used PET scans—or positron emission tomography—to image how glucose is processed in the brains of 17 methamphetamine abusers who had stopped using the drug nearly a week before they participated in her study. She then compared those brain images with the brain images of 18 non-abusers, who completed the same attention task as their brains were measured. © ScienCentral, 2000- 2004.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6273 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Supposed psychic powers that enable people to see auras around others may simply be a quirk of the brain, according to a University College London (UCL) study of a rare form of synaesthesia where some people see colourful 'auras' around their loved ones. The case study, reported in the October issue of Cognitive Neuropsychology, shows how some people can experience colours in response to people they know or words that evoke emotions – a condition known as emotion-colour synaesthesia. Dr Jamie Ward, author of the study, says: "A popular notion is that some people have a magical ability to detect the hidden emotions of others by seeing a colourful 'aura' or energy field that they give off. Our study suggests a different interpretation. These colours do not reflect hidden energies being given off by other people, rather they are created entirely in the brain of the beholder." In the study, Dr Ward of UCL's Psychology Department documented a woman known as GW who could see colours like purple and blue in response to people she knew or their names when read to her. Words triggered a colour which spread across her whole field of vision, whilst people themselves appeared to have coloured 'auras' projected around them. For example, "James" triggered pink, "Thomas" black and "Hannah" blue.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 6272 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Antidepressants on sale in the United States will have to carry a stark new warning of their link to suicidal behaviour among young people. America's Food and Drug Administration has ordered manufacturers to display a message that such drugs may increase the chance of suicidal thoughts. The "black box" warning will also say if the drugs have been approved for use by children and teenagers. But critics suggest such messages may actually exacerbate health problems. The FDA said it was not seeking to prohibit the use of antidepressants but merely trying to strike a balance between the risk of suicidal behaviour and "clinical need". "Antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behaviour... in children and adolescents with major depressive disorder and other psychiatric disorders," the warning begins. It appears inside a black box in bold letters - the strongest warning the US can put on prescription drugs - and is expected to start appearing in the next month or two. The FDA's announcement follows a Congressional hearing in which the agency was criticised for being slow to recognise the link between antidepressants and suicidal thoughts in some children. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6271 - Posted: 10.18.2004

By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG A stinky old conch shell is what finally convinced my husband that I had lost my sense of smell. He was horrified to watch me stick my nose right into the opening of the shell festering on our friends' back porch, something he couldn't bring himself to do because the rotting stuff inside was so revolting. Jeff had been listening for months to my complaints about not being able to smell, and I think he found the whole thing mystifying -- and maybe slightly annoying. The conch shell showed him. I felt vindicated, sort of. But mostly I felt vulnerable. Smelling is what told me not to eat spoiled egg salad and to stay clear of skunks. Without it, how could I know where the dangers lay? Smell is the stepchild of the senses, the one that many think they could do without. But when I couldn't smell things, I couldn't fully inhabit the world, and my movements in it were somehow, almost imperceptibly, more clumsy. This month, when the Nobel Prize was awarded to two researchers for investigating the science of smell, it brought back my mixed feelings about my own sense of smell's protracted disappearance. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Regeneration
Link ID: 6270 - Posted: 10.18.2004

By PAUL RAEBURN Just after 2 a.m. on Sept. 9, 1993, Christopher Simmons, 17, and Charles Benjamin, 15, broke into a trailer south of Fenton, Mo., just outside St. Louis. They woke Shirley Ann Crook, a 46-year-old truck driver who was inside, and proceeded to tie her up and cover her eyes and mouth with silver duct tape. They then put her in the back of her minivan, drove her to a railroad bridge and pushed her into the river below, where her body was found the next day. Simmons and Benjamin later confessed to the abduction and murder, which had netted them $6. Police called it ''a cheap price for a life.'' The two were convicted. Benjamin was sentenced to life in prison, and Simmons was given the death penalty. The Missouri Supreme Court overturned Simmons's sentence last year, and the case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, which recently heard arguments on the constitutionality of the death penalty for those who are 16 or 17 when they commit their crimes. (The court has already ruled against execution of anyone under 16.) Unlike other death-penalty cases, this one has drawn intense interest from the American Medical Association, the nation's psychiatrists and psychologists and other health and research groups. They've filed briefs with the court making a novel scientific argument -- that juveniles should not be executed because their brains are still developing. In other words, teenagers cannot be held fully responsible for their actions because all the wiring to allow adult decision making isn't completed yet. As Stephen K. Harper, a professor of juvenile justice at the University of Miami School of Law, puts it, ''Adolescents are far less culpable than we knew.'' Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6269 - Posted: 10.18.2004

By Aaron J. Sender John Donoghue is building a brain decoder that could transform the lives of people paralyzed by injury or disease. Those who have lost the ability to move their limbs often have perfectly intact brains, so Donoghue hopes to implant a chip that can monitor their brain activity and convert their intentions into computer commands. In its current version, the chip’s 100 hair-thin electrodes listen to neurons firing in an area that controls arm movement and translate the activity into electronic signals. A program then decodes the brain signals into commands that direct a cursor on a computer screen. Donoghue hopes the chip can eventually control appliances or even robotic limbs. “We’re effectively rewiring the nervous system—not biologically but with real wires,” says Donoghue. So far, more than 20 monkeys have been equipped with the implanted chip, and four of them have successfully willed a cursor to follow a moving target. Now Cyberkinetics, the company Donoghue cofounded to develop the device they call BrainGate, is preparing to test it in five paralyzed humans. “People with these kinds of injuries are perfectly capable of leading full and productive lives,” says Donoghue. “They just can’t get their signals out.” Give me the big picture first. How did the idea originate and what problem were you looking to solve? D: I’ve had a long-standing basic science research program that has really been directed at how the brain computes information. In a simpler sense, how do you turn thoughts into action? The way you get at the fundamental activity is by recording with electrodes in the brain. And since it’s a procedure that requires you to introduce that electrode, you have to use a monkey or an experimental animal. A monkey has a motor cortex like ours, and its behaviors are a lot like ours, so we use it as a model. © 2004 The Walt Disney Company.

Keyword: Movement Disorders
Link ID: 6268 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Anesthetics are effective in reducing the pain of circumcision in newborns, judging from the baby's heart rate and time spent crying after the procedure, a new analysis finds. A systematic review of 1,984 babies concludes that injectable or topical pain medicines significantly, but not totally, lower a baby's heart rate and reduce crying time -- two expressions of pain. Giving oral pain relievers or sugar solutions to the baby or playing comforting music had little apparent effect on pain sensations, says lead author Barbara Brady-Fryer, R.N., the Child Health Program at Stollery Children's Hospital-Capital Health in Edmonton, Alberta. "None of the studied interventions completely eliminated the pain response to circumcision," Brady-Fryer says. The review, which includes data from 35 separate randomized controlled studies, appears in the October issue of the Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing medical trials on a topic. There are possible medical benefits to circumcision, says the American Academy of Pediatrics, but they are not sufficient to recommend the procedure routinely for all newborn boys. Parents who want their sons circumcised for religious, cultural or personal reasons should talk to their physicians about anesthetics that can lower pain and stress, the Academy says.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 6267 - Posted: 10.18.2004

A significant number of patients who have stomach surgery to lose weight develop peripheral nerve damage, research has found. A team at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota found patients complained of pain, tingling or numbness. They believe the damage is caused by malnutrition as the body is less able to absorb nutrients following surgery. The research, focused on stomach stapling and gastric bypass surgery, will be published in Neurology. The researchers say the problem can probably be prevented by proper nutritional care. Neurologist Dr Jim Dyck, who worked on the study, said: "Surgeons who do weight-reduction surgery and the general public and should be aware that nerve damage is a frequent consequence of the surgery. "I'm not saying that people shouldn't have this surgery, but I am saying that there are real potential complications and that good follow-up care is necessary." The researchers found 16% of weight-reduction surgery patients they studied developed a peripheral neuropathy. These ranged from minor tingling or numbness in the feet to severe pain and weakness confining patients to wheelchairs. However, patients who were part of nutritional programmes before and after their weight loss surgery generally did not develop problems. Conversely, those who did not attend nutritional clinics were among the most at risk, along with those who suffered prolonged periods of nausea and vomiting, and those who lost weight quickly. Some forms of malnutrition, such as thiamine deficiency, are well known to cause peripheral neuropathy. (C)BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 6266 - Posted: 10.17.2004

By Robert Anderson VISITING A NEIGHBOR recently, I found her chatting in Armenian with a workman. I listened intently; I’d never heard Armenian spoken before. Noting my interest, the two speakers proudly informed me that their language was not related to any other. When I checked their claim on the Internet, I discovered, for one thing, that Armenian contains so many Farsi words, acquired during centuries of Persian influence, that early linguists mistakenly believed it was a Persian dialect. But I also found out that, though Armenian is a branch of the Indo-European family, the language evolved for thousands of years in the relative isolation of the Caucasus Mountains; it is, in fact, unlike any other. My curiosity piqued, I poked around for other language-specific sites and found an instructive Web page created by C. George Boeree, a professor of psychology at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania (www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/languages.html). I began by clicking on “Language Families of the World (maps),” and discovered a series of informative geographic charts, each one accompanied by brief but illuminating comments and statistics. The “Archaeolink” Web site provides a page with numerous links to sites that specialize in linguistic anthropology (www.archaeolink.com/linguistic_anthropology_index.htm). Click on the very first link to find a transcript of the PBS NOVA television program “In Search of the First Language.” The material focuses on the quest for the linguists’ holy grail—Nostratic—a hypothetical tongue that some maintain was once the universal spoken language. Copyright © Natural History Magazine, Inc., 2004

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 6265 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Greg Ross When Semir Zeki looks at a Picasso, he sees more than a fine painting. He sees a window into the workings of the visual brain. Zeki, a neurobiologist at University College London, believes that great artists may have begun discerning fundamental truths about the visual brain years before neurobiologists came to appreciate them. For example, in preparing for seminal experiments in the 1970s, Edwin Land needed stimuli that would reflect the barest essentials of color vision, to avoid invoking factors such as memory and learning in his subjects. He settled on overlapping rectangles of simple colors, with no recognizable objects—images, it turns out, that closely echo the canvases of Piet Mondrian, a Dutch painter who had been active some 50 years earlier. Zeki suggests that Land's discovery is not a coincidence. In painting his neoplasticist images, with their bold, straight lines and primary colors, Mondrian had declared that he was searching for "the constant elements of all forms." Thirty years later, physiologists discovered a central role played by cells that respond selectively to straight lines. Using only his intuition, Mondrian had correctly identified the essential building blocks of form perception. "You could say that Mondrian antedated or preceded the physiologists by at least three decades," Zeki says. "He was exploring the same question, but with different techniques." © Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society

Keyword: Vision; Emotions
Link ID: 6264 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers explore the science behind peer pressure PEGGY CURRAN Don't be alarmed, but Tomas Paus wants to look inside your teenager's head. Paus, a neuroscientist at the Montreal Neurological Institute, is intrigued by the neuro-cognitive roots of adolescent behaviour. Parents may tell themselves. "It's OK, she'll grow out of it," when their sweet young thing starts to dress like Britney Spears, swear like a rapper or cover her body with tattoos. Paus and his team want to know why they grow out of it. The Santa Fe Project, a joint study between Paus's unit at the Neuro and researchers in California, explores the science behind peer pressure - the reasons why some young people may feel compelled to look, act and sound just like everyone else in their circle of friends. Over the next five to seven years, Paus will use electroencephalogram (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission topography (PET) and a battery of neuropsychological tests to look at the brains of 120 Montrealers as they pass from childhood through puberty to find clues that may link brain development and activity to behavioural patterns. Copyright © 2004 CanWest Interactive Inc.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 6263 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A select group of people have a unique ability to spot when someone is lying, US research shows. A University of San Francisco study found only 31 people out of 13,000 could identify in nearly all cases when someone was lying. The group used facial expressions, body language and ways of talking and thinking to spot liars while the others did little better than chance. The team are now using them to help train police and other investigators. In the tests, during which the participants were shown video clips of people, the select group, dubbed wizards, were able to observe a few seconds of footage and detect lying. The study said the wizards had a "natural talent" although they were highly motivated and tended to be older. Police, lawyers and FBI agents were all among the groups who were unable to tell if people were lying. The wizards' success rate was even higher than the traditional polygraph test, which is used in the US and is claimed to have a 60% to 70% success rate. Dr Maureen O'Sullivan, the university's professor of psychology, said: "We hope that by studying wizards, we'll learn more about the kinds of behaviours and ways of thinking and talking that can betray a liar to an experienced interviewer." (C)BBC

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 6262 - Posted: 10.16.2004