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

Maths shows why tonal music is easy listening. PHILIP BALL Ever felt as though a piece of music is speaking to you? You could be right: musical notes are strung together in the same patterns as words in a piece of literature, according to an Argentinian physicist. His analysis also reveals a key difference between tonal compositions, which are written in a particular key, and atonal ones, which are not. This sheds light on why many people find it so hard to make sense of atonal works. In both written text and speech, the frequency with which different words are used follows a striking pattern. In the 1930s, American social scientist George Kingsley Zipf discovered that if he ranked words in literary texts according to the number of times they appeared, a word's rank was roughly proportional to the inverse of its frequency. In other words, a graph of one plotted against the other appeared as a straight line. The economist and sociologist Herbert Simon later offered an explanation for this mathematical relationship. He argued that as a text progresses, it creates a meaningful context within which words that have been used already are more likely to appear than other, random words. For example, it is more likely that the rest of this article will contain the word "music" than the word "sausage". © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Hearing; Language
Link ID: 5676 - Posted: 06.24.2010

SHARON BEGLEY, The Wall Street Journal After Heather Wood had been playing the harp for only two years, she was good enough for the principal harpist of the New Mexico Symphony to agree to give her lessons. By Thursday evening she had made it to performance nirvana: New York's Carnegie Hall. Ms. Wood, who just finished her freshman year at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn., and three other students enchanted an invitation-only audience with a program that ranged from Faure's "Elegie" to Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm." But what got the students to Carnegie Hall was less their way with keys and strings than their brilliance with genomes and fractals. The four are recent winners of the Siemens Westinghouse Competition in science and math. When officials at the Siemens Foundation, Iselin, N.J., systematically asked entrants about their music background, says Executive Vice President Herb Carter, "we were shocked" that nearly three-quarters were gifted musicians. Thursday's recital, arranged by Siemens, was the result. There is no shortage of anecdotal evidence that some of the most brilliant scientists and mathematicians are gifted musicians. Einstein, for example, played the violin. (The reverse relationship doesn't hold, though: Few musicians can compute a Hamiltonian matrix or explain the Krebs cycle.) The link makes intuitive sense. Heather, who plans to double major in music and math, says the two "use the same kind of logic. Music is made up of numbers and patterns, and pattern recognition is one of the skills I developed in math." ©2004 Associated Press

Keyword: Intelligence; Hearing
Link ID: 5675 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists find promiscuous voles lack key brain function linked to monogamy Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles Times Scientists working with a ratlike animal called a vole have found that promiscuous males can be reprogrammed into monogamous partners by introducing a single gene into a specific part of their brains. Once they have been converted, the voles hang around the family nests and even huddle with their female partners after sex. "A mutation in a single gene can have a profound impact on complex social behavior," said Larry Young, a neuroscientist at Emory University who reported the results in the current issue of the journal Nature. The research helps shed light on monogamy -- a rare social behavior -- and hints that perhaps specific genes could play a role in human relationships. Voles, found in the wild throughout much of North America, have been particularly useful in studying monogamy, which in biology refers more to the complicated social bonds based on partnership than to absolute sexual fidelity. ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5674 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new study linking a once widely used vaccine preservative to behavioral problems in mice could renew parents' fears that vaccinations increase the risk of autism. As this ScienCentral News video reports, those fears can lead parents to take a much bigger risk with their children's health. Suzanne Walther heard stories about the risks of vaccines, and decided not to have her daughter Mary Catherine vaccinated. Then, when Mary Catherine was a year old, she got very sick. "We were afraid she would not ever walk again and through the ten days that we were in the hospital were not sure she would not be severely impaired by this disease," says Walther. Mary Catherine had bacterial meningitis, a serious infection of the central nervous system that can cause brain damage, hearing loss, blindness, paralysis, coma and even death. It is prevented by the Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib) vaccine. "And even when she was in the intensive care unit and all the doctors had the chance to come in and say, 'Wow, you didn't have her vaccinated?', I didn't feel like, 'I'm a bad parent,' says Walther. "The gut-level feeling was anger. I was mad because that disease was out there and my child got it." © ScienCentral, 2000-2004.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 5673 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gregory M. Lamb | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor In the 1956 sci-fi adventure "Forbidden Planet," an American astronaut receives a "brain boost" from an alien machine that temporarily gives him enhanced mental powers. Before he dies from the effects of the boost, he helps unravel the mystery of how the civilization became extinct: It couldn't control its own immense mental powers. More recently, the characters in "The Matrix" film series are shown "downloading" knowledge into their brains nearly instantaneously. In "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" the lead character has the uncomfortable memories of a love affair removed from his mind, with unexpected results. What used to be confined to speculative fiction is fast becoming scientific fact. Brain boosting, or "neural enhancement," is already being done - and much more powerful techniques are on the way. Some observers say we're rushing into this brain-gain revolution without sufficient thought or preparation. "We're about to be handed a bunch of powerful new capabilities ... to refashion ourselves, improve ourselves," notes Martha Farah, a director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, in an e-mail. "We should always think through the ethical consequences of changing ourselves and our lives, for the individual and for society." Copyright © 2004 The Christian Science Monitor.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Intelligence
Link ID: 5672 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANNE MCILROY He says he loves you, but doesn't want to settle down. Science soon may have an answer. Researchers have found a way to turn naturally promiscuous animals into monogamous ones, a discovery that one day could lead to a "commitment pill" for human males. Led by scientists at Emory University in Atlanta, the team worked with two species of voles. (Voles look like furry mice with short tails.) Male meadow voles are loners who like to play the field; prairie voles tend to get attached to one female. The researchers, in essence, were able to change the meadow vole's natural propensity to philander by inserting a single gene that changed the way the pleasure centre in their brains worked. After a single treatment, they became as monogamous as prairie voles. Human males appear to have a similar system, which involves the hormone vasopressin, in their brains. Theoretically, the discovery opens the door to the possibility of medical treatment for men who have trouble committing to a relationship. Copyright 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5671 - Posted: 06.18.2004

By Julianna Kettlewell BBC News Online science staff A single gene can turn the Don Juan of voles into an attentive home-loving husband, Nature magazine has reported. By altering the small animal's brain hormone chemistry, scientists have made a promiscuous meadow vole faithful - just like its prairie vole cousin. The researchers think this will lead to a greater understanding of how social behaviour is controlled in humans. The same hormone activity could play a role in disorders like autism where people can lack simple social skills. Fewer than 5% of mammals are habitually monogamous. Prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) are among the select few. After mating, the males "fall in love": they stick close to their chosen one, guard her jealously and help her raise their young. Closely related meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus), on the other hand, take a more standard approach. They mate with several females and pay little attention to their babies. Previous studies indicated a hormone called vasopressin encourages pair-bonding in prairie voles. Scientists had also noticed that promiscuous voles have fewer vasopressin (V1a) receptors, in a bit of their forebrain called the ventral pallidum region. To prove vasopressin has a "taming" effect, the researchers gave meadow voles extra V1a receptors in the ventral pallidum region of their brains. (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5670 - Posted: 06.17.2004