Cameron Walker for National Geographic News With 66.3 million fathers in the United States, neckties may be flying out of the store this week in anticipation of Father's Day. It's a great time to appreciate Dad for years of service—teaching you to drive a stick, helping you buy your first home, or even showing you how to work a Windsor knot on your very own tie. But there are a slew of lesser-known fathers in the animal kingdom with intensive parenting skills of their own. "The whole point for the parents is to get at least two offspring to survive," said Ed Matheson, an ichthyologist (fish zoologist) at the Florida Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg. And for some species, the male's the one that helps his young—and the genes they're carrying—safely weather the often dangerous path toward adulthood. Once the female hip-pocket frog, an Australian species also known as the marsupial frog, lays up to 20 white eggs, her work is done. According to Frank Lemckert, a research scientist for the State Forests of New South Wales, Australia, the female then "heads off to do whatever she wants to do, perhaps finding a mate and laying more eggs" the male gets day care duty. Over a period of several days, the male frog watches the eggs hatch into tiny tadpoles. Then the male takes a seat right in the middle of the new tadpoles. The tadpoles wriggle along their father's back until they reach two tiny slots that open into the male's hip pouches. © 2004 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5696 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Older women using estrogen-alone hormone therapy could be at a slightly greater risk of developing dementia, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), than women who do not use any menopausal hormone therapy, according to a new report by scientists with the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study (WHIMS). The scientists also found that estrogen alone did not prevent cognitive decline in these older women. These findings from WHIMS appear in the June 23/30, 2004, Journal of the American Medical Association*. "These studies further support last year's recommendations that menopausal hormone therapy should not be used to prevent cognitive decline or dementia in older postmenopausal women," stated Judith A. Salerno, MD, MS, Deputy Director of the National Institute on Aging (NIA). "Women should follow the Food and Drug Administration's recommendation that those who want to use menopausal hormone therapy to control their menopausal symptoms should use it at the lowest effective dose for the shortest time necessary." The latest findings were reported by WHIMS Principal Investigator Sally A. Shumaker, PhD, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and her colleagues at the 39 study sites. This research was funded by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures Premarin™, the conjugated equine estrogens used in this trial, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5695 - Posted: 06.23.2004

Early humans evolved the anatomy needed to hear each other talk at least 350,000 years ago. This suggests rudimentary form of speech developed early on in our evolution. The conclusion comes from studies of fossilised skulls discovered in the mountains of Spain. A team of Spanish and US researchers used CT scans to measure the bones and spaces in the outer and middle ears of five specimens, thought to belong to Homo heidelbergensis. This species is thought to be a relative of the ancestral line leading to neanderthals. The team worked out how well the hearing apparatus they found could respond to sounds of various frequencies. The hominids' ears would have been sensitive to frequencies between two to four kilohertz, the range most important for understanding human speech. Chimpanzees' ears are relatively insensitive at those frequencies. Their ears are most strongly attuned to sounds peaking at either one kHz or eight kHz. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 5694 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Virtual reality appears to dramatically change how the brain physically registers pain, not just how people subjected to pain perceive the incoming signals, according to a new study by a group of University of Washington researchers. The work, which used a specialized type of magnetic resonance imaging to track pain-related brain activity, showed drops of as much as 97 percent in such activity in some brain centers. The study marks the first time that scientists have documented a link between virtual reality and pain reduction in terms of an actual physiological response. "What this study shows is that virtual reality is not only changing the way people interpret the incoming pain, it is changing the actual activity in the brain," said Hunter Hoffman, director of the VR Analgesia Research Center at the UW's Human Interface Technology Laboratory, a facility affiliated with the university's College of Engineering. The paper appears in the current issue of the journal NeuroReport. The findings support those of an earlier study by Hoffman and Dave Patterson, a psychologist and pain expert at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, in which patients were asked to rate their levels of pain while being treated for severe burns, both with and without virtual reality. Patients immersed in a virtual world during the often-excruciating therapy reported a 40-percent to 50-percent drop in pain.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 5693 - Posted: 06.23.2004

Study shows that the brain codes information unconsciously for basic eye movements Temporary rapidly induced blindness has provided evidence that an older, primitive part of the brain plays a role in processing visual information unconsciously. This finding by researchers at Houston's Rice University was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online this week (www.pnas.org). For the study, six volunteers with normal vision underwent more than 600 trials in which they had to look at a target placed at varying locations on a computer screen. For half of the trials, the participants were asked to move their eyes to the location of the target, and their eye movements were measured electronically. For the other half, the participants were asked to press a button that corresponded with the location of the target on-screen. During the trials, the researchers sometimes tried to distract them with an item shown on the center of the screen. Response time was recorded for each trial. Prior to the tests, the researchers mapped each participant's visual cortex – the area at the back of the brain that processes what the eye sees – with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a harmless noninvasive technique using brief magnetic pulses. When applied to the visual cortex, TMS induces temporary, reversible blindness lasting only a fraction of a second.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 5692 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kimberly W. Moy, Globe Correspondent Two years ago Mark Rocheford of suburban Minneapolis had a stroke that damaged his memory, paralyzed his left side and left him partially blind. Rocheford, now 56, underwent extensive rehabilitation within months of his stroke, but, as of April, his left hand was still ''pretty much useless." Frustrated, Rocheford volunteered to be part of an experimental ''homework" program for stroke patients. He spent up to four hours a day playing a computer game designed to get him to exercise his left hand. In two weeks of game-playing, he made as much progress as in the previous two years, regaining the ability to point, grab the handle of a pulley exercise system, and touch each finger to his thumb. ''He showed me all the stuff he could do, and I was amazed," said Rocheford's 21-year-old daughter Erin, who observed her father during weekend breaks from college. The program is part of a small but growing trend in health care to harness home computers to supplement regular visits with a therapist or a counselor. Home-based computer therapy programs are now under design across the country to help stroke victims, people with psychological problems, and disabled children, among others. © 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke; Regeneration
Link ID: 5691 - Posted: 06.24.2010

More people die of lung cancer than of colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined, making it the leading cause of cancer death for both men and women. Currently, there are no approved screening tests for lung cancer in the U.S. "One of our greatest challenges as pulmonary physicians is trying to identify [the] subset of smokers who are likely to develop lung cancer," says Avrum Spira, pulmonary physician at Boston University Medical Center. "If you look at the statistics, roughly 10 to 15% of people who smoke will develop lung cancer over their lifetime. There's no way to identify that 10 or 15 percent that are on their way to developing lung cancer." With the goal of finding preventative measures, Spira and his team compared the DNA in cells scraped from the windpipes of 75 smokers, former smokers, and nonsmokers. His study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that smoking causes damage at the genetic level, permanently altering several genes associated with tumors and cancer. "No one knows the exact genetic…damage that ultimately leads to lung cancer," Spira says. "What is known is that toxins in the environment—cigarette smoke being the principle one, but there are others, including asbestos and radon—are inhaled, go into the lung tissue…and they actually induce mutations in some of the DNA. The cells…change the way they look under the microscope, and eventually they start growing out of control—that is, the ability to control the division of the cell is lost," he says. "A single cell actually undergoes enormous expansion and grows within the lung and eventually leads to the demise of the patient." © ScienCentral, 2000-2004.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5690 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Doctors may now be able to explain why ex-smokers retain a lifelong risk for lung cancer. Researchers have discovered that the onslaught of cigarette smoke causes 97 genes to malfunction. Kicking the habit lets most genes return to normal function over time, but some are damaged forever. Cigarette smoke is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Frustratingly, although lung cancer responds well to treatment if caught early, there is currently no screening test available for the disease--doctors simply don't know what to look for yet. However, thanks to advances in genome data collection, that may change. In search of early markers of lung cancer, pulmonary and critical care physicians Avrum Spira and Jerome Brody of the Boston Medical Center sampled bronchial tube epithelial cells from 85 people. The study, reported in the 21 June issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, included 34 smokers, 18 former smokers, and 23 people who had never smoked. The team isolated RNA from the cells and looked for patterns in gene expression. Ultimately, the team identified 97 genes that function differently in smokers. Cell detoxification, airway inflammation control, and tumor suppression were dampened while cancer-causing gene activity increased. As expected, gene expression was most severely affected in the heaviest smokers. The team found no difference in gene function based on age or gender. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5689 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Some dogs can predict when a child will have an epileptic seizure, a new study has revealed. These dogs not only protect their charges from injuries, such as falling, but also seem to help kids deal with the daily struggle of epilepsy. Nine of the 60 dogs in the study (15 per cent) were able to predict a seizure by licking, whimpering, or standing next to the child. These dogs were remarkably accurate - they predicted 80 per cent of seizures, with no false reports. However, those interested in owning a dog with these skills cannot yet just order one. The dogs were not trained, but instead began predicting seizures spontaneously within a month of moving in with their owners. "No one is reliably training such dogs yet," says Adam Kirton, a neurologist at Alberta Children's Hospital in Canada and lead author of the study. His group is looking into setting up a training program. However, some epilepsy patients do have already dogs that have been trained to protect them during a seizure. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 5688 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DURHAM, N.C. -- The first sensory map of the fly equivalent of a tongue suggests that insects have discriminating taste -- perhaps trumping that of mammals in the ability to differentiate among bitter flavors. The findings could ultimately prove useful in the development of improved pest repellants, said the Duke University Medical Center researchers. According to the team's analysis, specialized cells in the fruit fly's primary taste organ, the labellum -- a structure on the fly's head that looks like a pair of lips covered in bristles -- respond to either sweet or bitter flavors, much like cells of the human tongue. However, while earlier work suggested mammalian bitter tasting cells are all alike, the Duke researchers found that different sets of bitter-sensitive nerve cells on the fly "tongue" bear distinct combinations of taste receptors, the Duke team found. Receptors are the protein switches that trigger the nerve cells to send signals to the brain's taste-processing centers in response to particular food items or other chemicals. The unique coding of the flies' tasting cells raises the possibility that insects can discern among different bitter tastes more precisely than can humans or other mammals, said Hubert Amrein, Ph.D., assistant professor of genetics and lead author of the study. Amrein and his colleagues reported their findings in the June 22, 2004, issue of Current Biology. The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health. © 2001-2004 Duke University Medical Center.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 5687 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Transgenic carrier inactivates cocaine in rat brains. LAURA NELSON A cure for cocaine addiction is one step closer. A method has been developed of mopping up the drug in the brain so that it produces less euphoria. Scientists hope that addicts will be less inclined to keep taking the drug if they do not get their hit. The idea of inactivating cocaine once it is in the body is not new. One approach is to inject addicts with antibodies that bind to the drug, in an attempt to counteract its powerful effect. Previously, these antibodies were unable to get into the brain, so the effect of the treatment was limited. The new method uses a virus that invades the brain to deliver the antibodies. “It’s a neat idea,” comments Arnold Ruoho, a pharmacologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The virus is safe, he says, because any harmful gene sequences have been removed, but genes for the appropriate antibodies have been inserted into the virus’s genome. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5686 - Posted: 06.24.2010

EVANSTON, Ill. --- A Northwestern University study is the first to suggest that delayed brain development and its interaction with puberty may be key factors contributing to language-based learning disabilities such as dyslexia. The article will appear in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the week of June 21. In "Learning Problems, Delayed Development and Puberty," co-authors Beverly A. Wright and Steven G. Zecker provide a new and overarching developmental hypothesis that could change the way that these disabilities, that affect one out of 12 children with normal intelligence, are studied, understood and treated. The authors are associate professors of communication sciences and disorders at Northwestern. "Approaching learning disabilities from the perspective of brain development could potentially unite many seemingly disparate deficits observed in adults with learning problems -- from evidence that their white brain matter is abnormally distributed to findings that they have difficulty distinguishing and manipulating language sounds," said Wright. The idea of brain delay also could help explain anecdotal evidence that learning disabled children toilet train late, have difficulty learning to ride a bicycle, talk later and generally appear less developmentally mature than their unaffected counterparts.

Keyword: Dyslexia; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5685 - Posted: 06.22.2004

St. Paul, Minn. – Researchers have new insights into a mysterious type of amnesia, according to a study published in the June 22 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study showed lesions didn’t appear immediately in the patients’ brains, but developed one to two days after an episode of transient global amnesia. Using diffusion weighted imaging, a type of MRI, a team in Germany examined 31 patients within hours of the onset of amnesia. In a new approach, the patients underwent two follow-up MRI studies over the next two days. After 24 hours, small lesions (areas of brain damage) appeared on the MRI for 23 patients, and after 48 hours, lesions appeared for three more patients. All lesions were located in the hippocampus, an area of the brain which plays an important role in memory functions. In two of the five patients without lesions, the MRI was done after 96 and 120 hours. Transient global amnesia is characterized by a sudden inability to form new memories or recall the near past. This amnesia often occurs following a stressful, emotional situation, and usually lasts less than 24 hours. There are no apparent long-term effects. The cause isn’t yet known. None of the patients studied had recent history of head injury or seizures. Despite some similarities, transient global amnesia isn’t the same as a transient ischemic attack (TIA). Lesions from TIA typically appear larger in size and without delay, in contrast to lesions associated with transient global amnesia.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Stroke
Link ID: 5684 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Faye Flam, Inquirer Staff Writer What happened in Ben Franklin's brain when he first thought of bifocals and the public library? Which of Wilbur Wright's neurons fired when the frustrated flight pioneer suddenly realized how to shift wing angles to bring the world controlled flight? Insightful thoughts, original ideas, American ingenuity - the engines of progress in science and technology, arts and culture. And yet we don't fully understand their nature, nor have we figured out how to summon them at will from whatever uncharted region of the unconscious mind they are born. But now, science is starting to give us insight into insight. Psychology professor John Kounios of Drexel University and Mark Jung-Beeman of Northwestern University are attempting to capture the seat of insight using an electroencephalogram (EEG) and brain scanning machine. When they asked subjects to solve certain types of word puzzles while hooked to these devices, they found some surprising patterns of brain activity surrounding the moments the right answers popped into the subjects' minds. They published their results earlier this year in a new journal called Public Library of Science. "Maybe if we understood how insights occur we could make them more probable" - even structure educational materials to encourage insightful thoughts in students, Kounios said.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 5683 - Posted: 06.22.2004

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor When an unemployed Liverpool builder began recovering from a stroke, he developed a compulsion to write poetry, draw, paint and make sculptures day and night. Tommy McHugh's unstoppable creativity cost him his marriage but, three years on, he feels "more whole" and, with his art being exhibited at local libraries and galleries, he has embarked on a new career. "I can't shut my brain down," he said. "A few hours at night and that is it." Neuro-scientists are puzzled by the origin of his activity. Only two other cases of "sudden artist output" are known after brain damage, both in America. This week McHugh will discuss his obsession in public with Dr Mark Lythgoe, of University College London, at the Science Museum's Dana Centre in London. Dr Lythgoe has co-written a paper on the case with Tom Pollak and Dr Michelle de Haan, both neuro-psychologists, and the international artist Marion Kalmus. McHugh, 54, left school at 14 and had a history of violence and class A drug abuse. His only interest in drawing was in scrawling messy, incomplete tattoos on his arms. He was admitted to hospital in January 2001 with a headache so severe that he was sick. A scan showed bleeding from a blood vessel which doctors staunched with a metal clip and a coil to promote clotting. © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 5682 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BARRY MEIER The issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry that hit the desks of its 37,000 readers this month reported test results for the antidepressant drug Celexa, indicating it could help children and teenagers. Before publication, the article received the kind of scrutiny common among medical journals. The study's authors had been asked to divulge their financial ties, if any, to the drug's marketer, Forest Laboratories Inc., which sponsored the clinical trial. And the report was sent to reviewers who examined the trial methodology and checked to make sure that the article reflected other relevant research about the use of antidepressants in youngsters. But neither the article nor the 27 scholarly footnotes that accompanied it mentioned another major drug-industry-sponsored trial completed in 2002, which found that Celexa did not help depressed adolescents any more than a placebo. Nor would the article's reviewers have been likely to find any clues of that trial's existence. The results of that trial were first noted last year on a single line of a chart that appeared on Page 96 of a textbook - one written in Danish. Like most medical journals, The American Journal of Psychiatry does not require company sponsors of drug trials to divulge information about all relevant trials of a medication. But that may soon change, as some leading journal editors try to address what they see as shortcomings in the way clinical tests are designed and analyzed by the drug industry, and how test results are disclosed. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5681 - Posted: 06.21.2004

As anyone watching Nadia weep her way hysterically through an accidentally self-inflicted 24-hour cold turkey on Big Brother will know, people suffering from chronic nicotine withdrawal are not people to be trifled with. Watching the Portuguese transsexual wrestle with her cravings within the confines of the house, a casual observer would have been forgiven for thinking she was attempting to overcome an addiction far more illicit than a 20-a-day tobacco hit. Such was her distress, she threatened to leave the house: "Without my ceeeegarettes," she wailed, "I can have no fun." Seeing such crazed behaviour can only be a deterrent to anyone seriously considering giving up smoking any time soon. To see a reasonably high-functioning, albeit hormonally eccentric, adult reduced to a sobbing mass of raw emotion through lack of nicotine is a grim reminder of the pain and irascibility everyone has to endure when a smoker is giving up. But is it really as bad as all that? Do all smokers mutate into fire-breathing tyrants the minute they stub out? I may be guilty of having selectively remembered the details, but when I gave up, six months ago, I don't recall being quite so possessed by the demon nicotine. Nor do I remember weeping uncontrollably at the slightest provocation, or fantasising about cigarettes 24/7. © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5680 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A long-held belief among anthropologists is that there's no way to tell exactly when a human female is ovulating. Men hoping to catch her fertile phase, therefore, would have no option but to hang around--and not go gallivanting. But a study in the July issue of Behavioral Ecology shows that the male brain isn't totally clueless. As it turns out, men find a woman's body odor most sexy when she's ovulating. Unlike most female primates, with their swollen buttocks and other not-too-subtle signals, women do not advertise their fertile periods. Or so one theory goes. But studies on human odor in the 1990s turned up telltale signs that men may have subtle ways of gauging their partners' reproductive state. To test whether men can also choose the most fertile scents from a set of unknown women, a group of researchers conceived a study using smelly T-shirts. Seppo Kuukasjärvi of the University of Jyväskylä in Finland and his colleagues asked 81 female students for details of their menstrual cycles and also whether they were taking contraceptive pills. Then they gave the women T-shirts to wear for two consecutive nights, after which the garments were tested by 43 volunteer sniffers of both genders. Male sniffers rated the scents of women in mid-cycle, around the time of ovulation, as most attractive, whereas the female sniffers did not. All sniffers were clueless about the menstrual cycle of pill-using women, though. Because the pill suppresses ovulation by blocking the production of certain hormones that peak at mid-cycle, the sexy smell is probably derived from these hormones, says evolutionary biologist Esa Koskela, one of the paper's authors. Anthropologist Craig Palmer, who studies the evolution of human sexual behavior at the University of Missouri in Columbia, is pleased with the new contribution to the field. But he adds that there's probably a lot more to the story than simply what men smell. For example, he says, women may feel jealous when they smell other women in ovulation. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5679 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Aileen Constans Despite advances in knowledge about the mechanisms of nerve injury and repair, regeneration strategies for peripheral and central nervous system (PNS and CNS) damage are still in their infancies. "Neuroscientists are very good at finding out, okay, this enzyme would work or this trophic factor would work, but translating that to a controlled application that will help lead to clinical translation is a different story," says Ravi Bellamkonda, a biomedical engineer at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Recently a group at the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, University of Miami School of Medicine, combined Schwann cell grafts with elevation of cAMP levels to promote axonal growth and improve functional recovery in spinal cord-injured rats.1 Yet such successes are few and far between. A growing number of researchers are turning to tissue engineering as a promising strategy. Incorporating knowledge of the biochemical environment necessary for nerve regeneration with the development of artificial and biological scaffolds that guide regrowth, neural tissue engineering aims to bridge gaps in peripheral nerves, bypass scar tissue in damaged spinal cords, or replace damaged and diseased brain. © 2004, The Scientist LLC, All rights reserved.

Keyword: Regeneration; Glia
Link ID: 5678 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower Researchers have debunked the much-publicized idea, known as the Mozart effect, that listening to classical music improves children's ability to reason about spatial relations and other nonverbal tasks. Learning to play a musical instrument or to sing, however, may indeed give youngsters an intellectual edge over their peers, a new study suggests. Six-year-olds who took weekly piano or singing lessons throughout the school year exhibited an average IQ increase of 7.0 points, says psychologist E. Glenn Schellenberg of the University of Toronto at Mississauga. Other 6-year-olds who either took weekly drama lessons or received no extracurricular lessons displayed an average IQ rise of 4.3 points, Schellenberg reports in the August Psychological Science. The small, but statistically significant IQ advantage for music students became apparent from standardized intelligence tests administered at the start and end of first grade. The apparent benefit of the musical training showed up on the test's verbal and nonverbal sections. Copyright ©2004 Science Service.

Keyword: Intelligence; Hearing
Link ID: 5677 - Posted: 06.24.2010