Psychiatric Times August 2004 Vol. XXI Issue 9 It Is Reasonable To Try and Treat Depression in BD Primarily With Antidepressants by Lori Altshuler, M.D. Bipolar disorder (BD) affects approximately 1% of the population and is associated with a high morbidity and mortality (Goodwin and Jamison, 1990). Bipolar disorder is recurrent in almost all cases, and most patients will spend more time in the depressed than the manic phase of their illness over their lifetime. This is true for patients with bipolar I disorder (BD-I) as well as bipolar II disorder (BD-II) (Goodwin and Jamison, 1990; Judd et al., 2002). Suicide attempts and completed suicides are high in this population (Goodwin and Jamison, 1990). Most Patients With BD Do Not Need, or Would Not Benefit From, Antidepressants by S. Nassir Ghaemi, M.D. Voltaire is reputed to have held his contemporary medical colleagues in low regard, saying: "Doctors pour drugs of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, into human beings of whom they know nothing." There is, no doubt, a herd mentality, codified in the "standard-of-care" legal criterion, that physicians share with all of mankind. Progress in medicine depends, however, on the ability to critically examine one's assumptions and a willingness to apply standards of evidence that share at least some aspects of scientific method. © 2004 Psychiatric Times

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 6085 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BU neurobiologists find evidence hippocampus in rat brain triggers special form of memory (Boston) -- For millennia, the process of memory and remembering has intrigued scholars and scientists. In 350 B.C., Aristotle, in his seminal treatise on the subject, described it as having two forms: familiarity and recollection. Of these, he considered recollection to be a purely human condition. That tenet is now being challenged by researchers at Boston University. Neurobiologists at Boston University's Center for Memory and Brain have provided the first evidence that rats use recollection when recognizing items they have recently experienced. In addition, the researchers show that rodents' capacity for recollection-like memory retrieval depends on the brain structure known as the hippocampus, the same structure believed to be involved in recollection in humans. Their findings are published in the September 9 issue of the journal Nature. Although neuroimaging studies of hippocampal activity in normal individuals as well as studies of amnesia indicate the hippocampus could be crucial to recollection, definitive methods for assessing hippocampal activity in memory have largely remained out of reach.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 6084 - Posted: 09.09.2004

By Anna Salleh, ABC Science Online — Next time you start imitating chimpanzees at the zoo, be aware that they know what you're doing. Australian researcher Mark Nielsen and colleagues at the University of Queensland report they have the first evidence that animals other than humans can recognize when they're being imitated. The research is published online ahead of print publication in the journal Animal Cognition. "We know that human children are able to recognize they're being imitated by around 14 months," Nielsen told ABC Science Online. "So we were interested to see if chimpanzees showed a similar ability." The researchers set up a series of videotaped experiments where one researcher, Emma Collier-Baker, imitated a friendly 31-year old male chimp called Cassie. The researchers looked for behavior normally seen in human children when they know someone is imitating them. Copyright © 2004 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 6083 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Two proteins may halt Parkinson’s disease, experiments with rats have shown, and work towards a potential human therapy has already begun. Researchers claim to have slowed the progress of Parkinson’s disease in rats by injecting two proteins into their brains. The proteins prevented the brain cell loss associated with the disease. The debilitating illness is caused by progressive brain cell death in a central part of the brain called the substantia nigra. These cells are responsible for producing the chemical dopamine, which acts on the basal ganglia - the part of the brain that controls movement. As more of these cells die, less dopamine is produced, giving rise to the characteristic movement problems associated with Parkinson’s disease. Until now, most therapies have concentrated on replenishing dopamine, but that does not stop the brain cell loss and so has had limited success. Now, working in rats, a team from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in California, US, have succeeded in halting brain cell death in the vital dopamine-producing region. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 6082 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By CHERYL WITTENAUER, Associated Press Writer ST. LOUIS -- Scientists say they've identified a gene that appears to be linked to both alcoholism and depression, a finding that may one day help identify those at higher risk for the diseases and guide new treatments. Previous studies of twins and adopted siblings have suggested there likely are genes in common underlying alcoholism and depression, and that the two disorders seem to run in families. But the lead researcher of the new study says this is the first report of a specific gene that seems to increase risk for both disorders. "Clinicians have observed a connection between these two disorders for years, so we are excited to have found what could be a molecular underpinning for that association," said Alison Goate, the Washington University School of Medicine researcher who led the study. Follow-up research might help reveal the underlying biology that makes some people susceptible to alcoholism, others to depression, some to both diseases, and others to neither. Goate says a variation or alteration of the CHRM2 gene influences those four separate conditions. The study is published in the September issue of the journal Human Molecular Genetics. Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Depression
Link ID: 6081 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Anyone who has looked at the aerial world during an underwater dive will have marvelled at the distortions in apparent size, shape, and position of aerial objects. In a new study, researchers have shown that archer fish can learn to cope with these strongly viewpoint-dependent distortions, and this ability enables the fish to precisely judge from any underwater viewpoint the absolute size of their aerial prey. The work is reported by Stefan Schuster, now at the University of Erlangen-Nuremburg, and colleagues at the University of Freiburg. Many animals are able to judge the absolute size of visual objects, a skill that becomes especially useful for tasks such as selecting prey. The ability to judge absolute size, however, requires that the visual system be able to perform a critical correction to account for distance between the eye and the viewed object: dramatic differences in the size of the actual retinal image occur as the distance between viewer and object changes. A situation in which this corrective requirement is especially challenging arises for animals that need to judge the size of aerial prey from an underwater vantage point. Here, as the study of Schuster and colleagues shows, the complex optical situation arising from distance and refraction requires precise understanding of the relationship between an object's apparent size and the fish's relative position to the object. In the experiments reported by the researchers, archer fish viewed a set of eight disks at various heights above the water surface from various horizontal distances and selected one of the disks as a shooting target based only on its absolute size. Although naïve fish often selected disks that would be too large to be swallowed, all could eventually learn to judge absolute size with great precision; in doing so, they perfectly accounted for the complex optical situation posed by their underwater viewpoint.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 6080 - Posted: 09.08.2004

Pushing neurons' physiological limits provides researchers with new ways to repair nerve damage (Philadelphia, PA) – Sometimes it is the extremes that point the way forward. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have induced nerve fibers – or axons – to grow at rates and lengths far exceeding what has been previously observed. To mimic extreme examples in nature and learn more about neuronal physiology, they have mechanically stretched axons at rates of eight millimeters per day, reaching lengths of up to ten centimeters without breaking. This new work has implications for spinal cord and nerve-damage therapy, since longer implantable axons are necessary for this type of repair. In the present study, the team, led by Douglas H. Smith, MD, Professor of Neurosurgery and Director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair, placed neurons from rat dorsal root ganglia (clusters of nerves just outside the spinal cord) on nutrient- filled plastic plates. Axons sprouted from the neurons on each plate and connected with neurons on the other plate. The plates were then slowly pulled apart over a series of days, aided by a precise computer-controlled motor system. "By rapid and continuous stretching, we end up with huge bundles of axons that are visible to the eye," says Smith. The axons started at an invisible 100 microns and have been stretched to 10 centimeters in less than two weeks. Smith and colleagues report their findings in the cover story of the September 8, 2004 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6079 - Posted: 06.24.2010

London, UK: International experts will (Wednesday 8 September) consider the evidence for a link between the rise in childhood leukaemia and increased light at night at an international scientific conference in London. The incidence of childhood leukaemia increased dramatically in the twentieth century. The increase has mainly affected the under five age group, in whom the risk increased by more than 50 per cent during the second half of the century alone. Although the causes of leukaemia in children are poorly understood, environmental factors are thought to play a major role in the rising incidence since changes in our genetic make up simply do not happen on this kind of timescale. If this is the case, then it may be possible to take preventative measures, but first we need to determine what these factors are. Whilst the link between leukaemia and light at night may, on the surface, seem surprising, it has a logical basis and there is considerable evidence pointing towards the association. Compared with 100 years ago we are exposed to considerable light at night (LAN) during the natural hours of darkness. LAN disrupts our natural circadian rhythm, suppressing the normal nocturnal production of the hormone melatonin.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 6078 - Posted: 09.08.2004

Helen Pilcher Ever wondered what makes parrots so good at mimicking human speech? It turns out that the feathered impressionists use their tongues to create vowel-like sounds, just as we do. In human speech, noise is produced in the larynx and can then be modified by the movement of the tongue in the mouth. This helps us to make complex vowel and consonant sounds. Until now, many researchers thought that birds produced and modified their song in the avian equivalent of the larynx, the syrinx, and that the tongue played no role at all. But parrots are known to bob their fleshy tongues back and forth when they talk, so Gabriel Beckers from Leiden University in the Netherlands and colleagues decided to see whether these movements contribute to the birds' great talent for mimicry. Their results are published in Current Biology1. The team studied five feral monk parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus), which had been caught and killed as part of a government pest control program in Florida. In each bird, they replaced the syrinx with a tiny electronic speaker and then used a hook to move the tongue around as the amplifier played bursts of sound. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 6077 - Posted: 06.24.2010

I am lying on a couch on my side when suddenly the white wall opposite me becomes a mosaic. Alarmed, I get up and walk around. All the walls are mosaics. My world has been transformed into a cubist painting. I call my aunt in Manchester. She is a glaucoma sufferer who is constantly urging me to get my eyes checked in case I have inherited the disease. She has always warned me to be vigilant about any change in my vision in case it signaled impending blindness. I tell her what's happening. "Go to the doctor NOW!" she pleads. That was five years ago, near midnight, in provincial France. A relief GP was summoned. This young man, straight out of medical school, took my blood pressure. It was normal. But he told me to get to the nearest hospital as a precaution. There, the medics were also baffled. They suggested an urgent trip to the eye specialist. The next morning his diagnosis was: "Ophthalmic migraine. Nothing you can do but wait." It wore off and, since this attack, I've never seen mosaics. It left me wondering why none of the medics recognised the symptoms. And so I wanted more people to know about ophthalmic migraines. Ophthalmic migraines are not that rare, though the more classic storm-in-the-head type has been part of my life since my mid-twenties. Once the migraine starts, I yearn for a dark room and utter quiet for 12-36 hours. It begins with the sensation of a white-hot needle passing through my left eye and across the left side of my face. I can't bend my head or turn it without intense pain. I shiver and then sweat. Sometimes there are sneezing bouts and dizziness. Once, I fainted. ©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 6076 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Nearly half of people with epilepsy have problems learning something new and feel they cannot think quickly enough, a survey has found. An even higher proportion of respondents said that they regularly feel sleepy and lethargic. The survey, by the International Bureau for Epilepsy, found 56% of respondents blamed their problems on their medication. Many said it blighted work, personal relationships and leisure activities. Problems such as the inability to recall names and faces, or access memories, were often reported. Some said slowness of thought prevented them from completing their education, or securing rewarding jobs, and from fulfilling basic tasks such as remembering a shopping list, or a friend's telephone number. The results, based on a poll of 425 people with epilepsy in five European countries, appear to confirm long-standing concerns that epilepsy drugs do have a negative impact on brainpower. Hilary Mounfield, chair of the European Committee of the International Bureau for Epilepsy, said: "We hear of far too many people whose lives are blighted not only by their epilepsy, but also by the drugs they are prescribed to treat it. (C)BBC

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 6075 - Posted: 09.07.2004

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. One night, asking his wife about their dinner plans, Stephen R. Anderson, a Yale professor of linguistics and psychology, got the reply: "I want to go out." The next night, he found the cat clawing the rug near the door. His wife calmed him down by translating: "She's saying, 'I want to go out.' " So do we conclude, Dr. Anderson asks, that the cat can talk? The answer, he argues, is no - although, as a human, he could say the same thing by shaking his head, rolling his eyes or even saying sarcastically, "Yeah, sure." Dr. Anderson is the author of "Doctor Dolittle's Delusion," to be published by Yale University Press in November. The book is a linguistics-based argument that if kindly John Dolittle of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh was hearing voices, they weren't coming from Jip the dog or Gub-Gub the pig. The idea that animals have all-but-human mental lives, emotions and powers of communication has become increasingly fashionable, after centuries in which such notions were considered absurd. Since the 1970's, as animal behaviorists have trained apes to make requests by stringing gestures or ideograms together and acousticians have detected that both whales and elephants make subsonic calls, suspicions have arisen that animals have more to say than humans realized. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 6074 - Posted: 09.07.2004

Mystery of consciousness PHILIP MARCHAND Scientists who have been trying to understand the brain have recently tried to measure neural activity of Republicans and Democrats to see if political affiliations had anything to do with brain chemistry. The results were inconclusive. (I think the Democrat brains were more active in the "I feel your pain" part of the limbic system.) What really caught my eye about a New York Times Magazine article on the topic was the following statement: "One of the most celebrated insights of the past 20 years of neuroscience is the discovery — largely associated with the work of Antonio Damasio — that the brain's emotional systems are critical to logical decision-making. People who suffer from damaged or impaired emotional systems can score well on logic tests but often display markedly irrational behaviour in everyday life." I'm sure Damasio has done good work, rooting around the neocortex. But what does it say for neuroscience that one of its "most celebrated insights" is something we've known for three or four millennia? "Imagination does not breed insanity," G.K. Chesterton wrote around the beginning of the 20th century. "Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do." Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 6073 - Posted: 06.24.2010

We know them as heroes, but many of the first-responders who survived 9-11 felt far from heroic. Instead they were shattered by post-traumatic stress. As this ScienCentral News video reports, some software engineers scrambled to help. Stephen King, a retired New York City fire fighter, got out of the World Trade Center alive on September 11th, 2001. But the trauma didn't end that day. "It overtook every aspect of my life," says King. "I couldn't enjoy anything, I couldn't get basic necessities like sleep…I was like a walking zombie, literally. All the things that always kept me occupied and busy just nothing seemed to matter anymore." King reached out for help and found out he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. Psychiatrist JoAnn Difede, director of the Program for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Studies and a psychiatry professor at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, began working with King using the first-line, or first choice treatment for PTSD, called imaginal exposure therapy. "We ask the patient to imagine the event as if it were occurring again in their own imagination," she explains. "You want the person to relive the experience and process the memories. If they can't access their memories then they really can't process it and get better." That's what happened to King. He felt he made some initial progress, then "hit a plateau." © ScienCentral, 2000- 2004.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 6072 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Newborn babies prefer to look at attractive faces, says a UK researcher, suggesting that face recognition is hardwired at birth, rather than learned. Alan Slater and his colleagues at the University of Exeter showed paired images of faces to babies as young a one day old and found that they spent more time fixated on the more attractive face. “Attractiveness is not in the eye of the beholder, it’s innate to a newborn infant,” says Slater. Developmental psychologists have known for years that babies have preferences for certain objects, such as high contrast images, and curvy, biological shapes. But where these preferences come from remained unknown. Slater’s research, using extraordinarily young infants, supports the idea that babies are not mere blank slates, but instead come into the world with a fairly well developed perception system. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6071 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- When it comes to making noise, both parrots and humans rely on extremely specialized vibrating organs in their throats. Now scientists at Indiana University and Leiden University in The Netherlands have shown for the first time that parrots, like humans, also can use their tongues to craft and shape sound. "This is the first direct evidence that parrots are able to use their large tongues to change the acoustic properties of their vocalizations," said IU Bloomington neurologist Roderick Suthers, who participated in the research. "The basic idea here, we believe, is that motor control of tongue movements is an important part of communication, just as it is in humans." It's known that to produce sound, a parrot uses its syrinx, a voice box organ nestled between the trachea and lungs. The lingering question has been: What happens to that sound as it moves up and out of the throat? Ornithologists and bird enthusiasts have long noticed that parrots bob their tongues back and forth while they vocalize, but it wasn't known whether the tongue motions contributed significantly to sound-making.

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 6070 - Posted: 09.07.2004

By JANET MASLIN Dr. Marcia Angell is a former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine and spent two decades on the staff of that publication. If much of that time was devoted to reviewing papers on pharmacological research, it must have been spent in a state of near-apoplexy. Her new book, 'THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DRUG COMPANIES', is a scorching indictment of drug companies and their research and business practices. "Despite all its excesses, this is an important industry that should be saved - mainly from itself," she writes. This turns out to be one of her book's more forgiving pronouncements, since the rest of it is devoted to assertions of shady, misleading corporate behavior. If she is accurate in her assumptions about big drug companies' feistiness and tenacity, Dr. Angell is likely to be on the receiving end of angry rebuttals. She is sometimes vague enough to leave room for such attacks. ("I have heard that morale in some parts of the F.D.A. is extremely low, and I can certainly understand why it might be.") But over all, Dr. Angell's case is tough, persuasive and troubling. Arguing that in 1980 drug manufacturing changed from a good business into "a stupendous one," thanks to changes in government regulations. She adds, "Of the many events that contributed to their sudden great and good fortune, none had to do with the quality of the drugs the companies were selling." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous; Depression
Link ID: 6069 - Posted: 09.07.2004

By HAROLD VARMUS THE pilot episode of "Medical Investigation," NBC's new medical science series, retells a famous old New York story about a rare type of food poisoning that produces blue patients. (The pilot will be broadcast on Thursday night at 10 Eastern; the following night at the same time, the show will assume its regular slot). Though its source isn't credited, the episode (written by Jason Horwitch) is an homage to "Eleven Blue Men," the great medical journalist Berton Roueché's classic account of a mysterious food poisoning that literally turned 11 New York City alcoholics blue. Well, perhaps "homage" isn't the right term. Roueché's account, first published in The New Yorker in 1947, is careful and understated. As the narrator, he solicits the facts retrospectively from two seasoned, courteous investigators from the New York City public health department who seem to be competing for a modesty award. They have obviously done a clever, systematic and ultimately revealing investigation, working in collegial fashion with the doctors and nurses caring for the patients. And they succeeded: all but one patient survived, and the two sleuths traced the source of the toxic substance to bowls of oatmeal and a single salt shaker that contained sodium nitrite (rather than regular sodium chloride) from a mislabeled package. But the detectives also admit, with humility, to a few loose ends to their story; the survivors were discharged from the hospital before they could verify that they had eaten at the same table and used the salt shaker vigorously. In Roueché's account, as in real-life medicine, good investigators are left with a few nagging doubts. The pilot's first departure from its source material is its setting. "Medical Investigation" features doctors from an elite (and fictional) unit of the National Institutes of Health. The producers say that the show is meant to celebrate the agency, and indeed, the opening credits mention that N.I.H. has spent more than 100 years improving the world's health. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Miscellaneous
Link ID: 6068 - Posted: 09.05.2004

By JAMES GORMAN I have to admit that the first sentence caught my eye. It's not often that you find a scientific article that begins, "Can relief from pain be a pleasure?" When I started reading, however, I soon discovered that this was not research in the long and honorable tradition of Kinsey. There wasn't a dominatrix to be found. No one dressed in leather. In fact there was no sex at all. You can imagine my relief. Instead of some lurid tale of domination and submission, the article was all about fruit flies - their pain, their pleasure and what neurological pathways mediate the experience. What the scientists, at the University of Würzburg in Germany, discovered is that it really does feel good when you stop beating your head against the wall. I mean that figuratively, of course. The researchers didn't really beat the flies' tiny heads against tiny brick walls. That would have been too weird, more appropriate for a flea circus, which seems to be the theatrical parallel to scientific insect training. The scientists, who published their findings in the current issue of Nature, were far more clinical. They used electric shocks and odors to train the flies. The researchers first showed that when the flies were exposed to an odor and then a shock, they connected the smell with the pain and learned to avoid that odor. So far, no surprise. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 6067 - Posted: 09.05.2004

Nathan Seppa A diet that includes a key omega-3 fatty acid found in fish and canola oil prevents some memory loss in mice that develop a disease similar to Alzheimer's, researchers report in the Sept. 2 Neuron. The finding is consistent with previous research suggesting that fish oil supplements might reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease in people. Other work has shown that the fatty acid, called docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), is essential to brain function and that Alzheimer's patients have low concentrations of it in their blood. The early memory and learning problems that mark the disease occur because damaged brain cells fail to transmit messages consistently to each other across junctions called synapses. To assess what role DHA might have in maintaining this transmission, Greg M. Cole, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and his colleagues used old mice—17 months on average—that were genetically engineered to develop waxy protein plaques in their brains, much as Alzheimer's patients do. Copyright ©2004 Science Service.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 6066 - Posted: 06.24.2010