Scientists are to implant tiny computer chips in the brains of paralysed patients which could 'read their thoughts'. US researchers from Cyberkinetics Inc are to be allowed to implant the chips underneath the skulls of patients. The chips will map the neural activity which occurs when someone thinks about moving a limb. Scientists will then translate those signals into computer code that could one day be fed into robotic limbs. The company, based in Foxboro, Massachusetts, has been given Food and Drug Administration approval to begin the trials of the four-millimetre square chips. The 'Brain Gate' contains tiny spikes that will extend down about one millimetre into the brain after being implanted beneath the skull, monitoring the activity from a small group of neurons. (C)BBC

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 5309 - Posted: 04.18.2004

By STEPHEN S. HALL AMONG many exquisitely rendered moments in Jonathan Weiner's ''His Brother's Keeper: A Story From the Edge of Medicine,'' a simple daily act of fine motor skill early on quietly explodes into a moment of heartbreaking significance, when a young carpenter named Stephen Heywood inserts a key one morning into the front door of a cottage he has been lovingly restoring in Palo Alto, Calif. A self-described slacker, a brown dwarf of a star in an otherwise brilliant constellation of familial ambition, Stephen has struggled to find his niche, professionally and perhaps emotionally, in a family of overachievers based in Newton, Mass. His mother, Peggy, is a retired psychotherapist; his father, John, is director of an engineering lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; his younger brother, Ben, is trying to make it in Hollywood as a producer; and his other brother, Jamie, two years older, is not just an M.I.T.-educated mechanical engineer of uncommon vision and intuition, but a larger-than-life personality who has yet to meet a challenge he cannot overcome. The family's greatest challenge begins to announce itself that morning in December 1997, when Stephen discovers that try as he might, he is unable to turn the key in the lock with his right hand. It is an early sign that he is suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (A.L.S.), often called Lou Gehrig's disease. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 5308 - Posted: 04.18.2004

The brains of very premature babies may be damaged by the use of steroids to prevent and treat chronic lung disease, research suggests. Researchers from the Royal Hospital, Belfast, found babies who had been given steroids showed signs of impaired brainpower as children. They say the benefits of the drug must be balanced against possible longer term damage. The study was presented at the British Psychological Society annual meeting. The researchers compared 77 premature children who were treated with postnatal steroids with 66 premature children who did not receive the drugs, and 25 siblings who were not premature. The results showed that the children who were treated with steroids performed less well on a range of tests designed to assess eight areas of mental ability. However, the researchers stress that steroids have been shown to be an effective way to treat chronic lung disease, a common problem in premature infants, who are often born before their lungs are fully developed. (C)BBC

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5307 - Posted: 04.17.2004

A patch is being developed which could cut drinkers' desire for a tipple. The patches will contain both nicotine, to help smokers quit, and a compound called mecamylamine, which tackles the temptation to drink. Alcohol consumption in drinkers was reduced by using the patch, researchers at Duke University, North Carolina, found. However, alcohol campaigners said it was better for people to simply stick to recommended amounts of alcohol. The patches would be worn at all times, which has the benefit of keeping medication levels in the blood constant. A patch purely for drinkers who do not smoke could be developed at a later date. The most common current treatment is antabuse which causes drinkers to have the symptoms of a bad hangover. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5306 - Posted: 04.17.2004

By DENISE GRADY Despite studies in recent years finding that hormone therapy after menopause did women more harm than good, researchers at a group of major medical centers have decided to test the treatment again because they still suspect it may have benefits, particularly for younger women. The researchers hope to find out whether hormones can protect against artery disease if women start treatment early in menopause. The scientists also want to find out whether there is any advantage to giving estrogen by a different route, skin patches instead of the usual pills, and changing the schedule of the hormone given along with it, progesterone. The hormones must be taken together because estrogen alone can cause uterine cancer; adding progesterone counters that risk. The new study is expected to start in September, last five years and include 720 women at eight medical centers around the country. The women will be ages 40 to 55 and in early menopause, defined as six months to no more than three years past their last menstrual period. They will take estrogen in pill or patch form, or placebos, and those taking estrogen will use a vaginal gel containing progesterone for 10 days a month. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5305 - Posted: 04.17.2004

A large, multi-center heart disease prevention study, part of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), found that estrogen-alone hormone therapy had no effect on coronary heart disease risk but increased the risk of stroke for postmenopausal women. The study also found that estrogen-alone therapy significantly increased the risk of deep vein thrombosis, had no significant effect on the risk of breast or colorectal cancer, and reduced the risk of hip and other fractures. The WHI is sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The estrogen-alone study was stopped at the end of February 2004 because the hormone increased the risk of stroke and did not reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, a key question of the trial. The study was to have ended in March 2005. Initial findings appear in the April 14 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. A separate report on the WHI Memory Study of estrogen alone's effects on dementia and cognitive function will be published soon.

Keyword: Stroke; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5304 - Posted: 04.17.2004

John Travis When injected into the brains of mice, a hormone produced by fat cells induces the animals to burn more energy than normal and lose weight, according to a new study. The finding bolsters the view that body fat carries on a complex chemical conversation with the brain, one that physicians might tap into to treat obesity and other weight disorders. Until a decade ago, scientists largely viewed fat cells, or adipocytes, as mere sacs of fat. Then leptin made its surprising debut. Researchers found that this hormone is secreted by fat cells and recognized by brain regions that control food intake. Some people hailed leptin as the key to defeating obesity. Although that early enthusiasm faded as experiments failed to show a role for leptin in most human obesity, the hormone's discovery set the stage for a reassessment of fat cells. They've since been found to secrete several additional chemicals, including adiponectin, the subject of the new study. Copyright ©2004 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 5303 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower Adult male baboons are bad dudes. They regularly square off in bloody fights over access to food and females, whom they will also attack. In this vicious pecking order, males at the top bully bottom dwellers into a demoralized state of submission. So, it startled Stanford University biologists Robert M. Sapolsky and Lisa J. Share to find a baboon troop in which even top-rung males exhibited remarkably peaceful behaviors. The big honchos often left weak males alone and refrained from attacking females, focusing instead on fighting each other. It's a uniquely "pacific culture" among wild baboons, Sapolsky and Share conclude. A decade earlier, the most aggressive males in this troop had died. The current top males arrived later and have no close genetic ties to the other members, past or present. Male baboons typically migrate into a troop as adolescents. Copyright ©2004 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 5302 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Some people are better than others at remembering what they have just seen – holding mental pictures in mind from moment to moment. An individual's capacity for such visual working memory can be predicted by his or her brainwaves, researchers funded by the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health have discovered. A key brain electrical signal leveled off when the number of objects held in mind exceeded a subject's capacity to accurately remember them, while it continued to soar in those with higher capacity, report University of Oregon psychologist Edward Vogel, Ph.D., and graduate student Maro Machizawa, in the April 15, 2004 Nature. Analogous to a computer's RAM, working memory is the ever-changing content of our consciousness. It's been known for years that people have a limited capacity to hold things in mind that they've just seen, varying from 1.5 to 5 objects. "Our study identifies signals from brain areas that hold these visual representations and allows us to coarsely decode them, revealing how many objects are being held and their location in the visual field," explained Vogel.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 5301 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Tim Radford, science editor, The Guardian Migrating songbirds check their direction each night before take-off - by taking a bearing on the setting sun. Many migrating creatures - honeybees, certain fish, many birds, and even monarch butterflies - possess built-in compasses to follow the lines of the Earth's magnetic field, and today in the journal Science ornithologists report on how they tried to mislead thrushes by exposing them to magnetic fields distorted towards the east. It seemed to work. Released after dark, the birds flew west instead of north to their summer breeding grounds. They were fitted with radio transmitters, and the German and American ornithologists followed them by car for up to 1,100km (680 miles). However, once free to decide where they were, the birds noted the direction of twilight and corrected their flight northward. The conclusion: thrushes steer by compasses at night, and update them from the setting sun every 24 hours. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 5300 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have pinpointed how toxic protein deposits kill off nerve cells in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. The international team hope the breakthrough, published in Science, could lead to new treatments. Alzheimer's is linked to the build up of amyloid protein plaques. The new study has shown that these plaques inflict damage by interacting with an enzyme produced in the cell's energy-producing power plants. The interaction damages these tiny structures - known as mitochondria - and causes toxic substances to leak out into the rest of the cell, leading to its destruction. It is thought that this loss of cells directly leads to the memory less and other symptoms associated with Alzheimer's. The new findings are based on an analysis of brain tissue from Alzheimer's patients, and genetically engineered mice. The researchers hope that it may eventually be possible to block or reduce the interaction between the amyloid plaques and the mitochondrial enzyme. (C) BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers; Apoptosis
Link ID: 5299 - Posted: 04.16.2004

Scientists have identified a gene which causes some cases of Parkinson's Disease. The findings could open up new avenues of research into other genetic factors which cause or predispose people to develop the disease. Researchers at London's Institute of Neurology say in Science that they could also lead to new treatments. Parkinson's is a degenerative, neurological condition for which there is currently no cure. It is not generally a genetic condition, but there are some cases where it does run in families. This is the first time a Parkinson's gene has been identified by researchers in the UK. (C)BBC

Keyword: Parkinsons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5298 - Posted: 04.16.2004

By GARDINER HARRIS Top Food and Drug Administration officials admitted yesterday that they barred the agency's top expert from testifying at a public hearing about his conclusion that antidepressants cause children to become suicidal because they viewed his findings as alarmist and premature. "It would have been entirely inappropriate to present as an F.D.A. conclusion an analysis of data that were not ripe," Dr. Robert Temple, the Food and Drug Administration's associate director of medical policy, said in an interview. "This is a very serious matter. If you get it wrong and over-discourage the use of these medicines, people could die." Dr. Temple was seeking to quell a growing controversy into whether the agency's warnings on March 22 that antidepressant therapy could lead patients to become suicidal were sufficient. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5297 - Posted: 04.16.2004

Scientists try to get a grip on love through MRI scans By ROWAN HOOPER This column is often concerned with the evolution of sexual behavior and sexual anatomy, but instead of attributing everything to sex, for once let's accept a view like that of Bertrand Russell. "Love," he said, "is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives." So if love is about something other than getting more sex, what is that thing? And -- as this is Natural Selections -- how did love evolve? Until recently, the questions were entirely metaphysical. That is, we could argue about them but couldn't really answer them, at least not with any scientific rigor. The whole subject was best left to philosophers like Russell. But -- it will be no surprise to learn -- scientists are closing in on love. Before long there should be a framework in place which will help us explain the nature of love and understand its evolution. The Japan Times 2004 (C) All rights reserved

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Brain imaging
Link ID: 5296 - Posted: 04.16.2004

Implanting electrodes in the lower back to stimulate spinal nerves could help people suffering from bowel incontinence, suggests a new study of the technique. The results offer hope to the millions of people who suffer from the involuntary voiding of their bowels. Overall, two people in a hundred are affected by the condition. But as people age, the condition becomes increasingly common - affecting up to 11 per cent of men, and 26 per cent of women over the age of 50. Now an international team has shown that implanting electrodes to stimulate the sacral spinal nerve greatly improves the condition and the quality of life of the sufferer. Stimulating the nerve helps to control the anal sphincter, the muscles which regulate the passage of the faeces. "Our trial has shown a convincing benefit of sacral nerve stimulation," writes the team led by Klaus Matzel, at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Erlangen, Germany. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 5295 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Atorvastatin unclogs arteries and may help memory too. ERIKA CHECK People with Alzheimer's disease may benefit from taking a popular cholesterol-lowering medication, scientists announced on Wednesday. In a study of 63 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, the performance of those who took a drug called atorvastatin declined less on tests of memory and brain function than that of those who did not take the drug. The researchers, led by Larry Sparks of the Sun Health Research Institute in Sun City, Arizona, say the result is a sign that atorvastatin and similar drugs might slow the devastation caused by Alzheimer's disease. "This fact that this trial showed a benefit is very exciting," says Benjamin Wolozin, a professor of pharmacology at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. "But it is not big enough to be definitive," he adds. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 5294 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Indianapolis -- A research team headed by Indiana University School of Medicine scientists has identified a gene that is strongly linked to an individual's risk of developing alcoholism. The gene identified, GABRA2, is one of several genes that produce parts of the receptor for the brain's primary inhibitory neurotransmitter, GABA. GABA is a chemical messenger that carries information between nerve cells; when GABA binds to the GABA-receptors on a nerve cell, it inhibits the firing of that cell. GABA is known to be involved with some of the body's responses to alcohol consumption, such as loss of physical coordination, effect on mood, and alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Alcoholism, which affects nearly 14 million Americans and can cause many social and health problems costing society an estimated $185 billion annually, is what scientists call a "complex" disease, meaning that many genes as well as environmental factors play a role in whether a person develops the disease. While there is not one single "gene that causes alcoholism" the statistical link between this gene and the risk for alcoholism is powerful, said Howard J. Edenberg, Ph.D., Chancellor's Professor at the IU School of Medicine. Edenberg was the lead researcher for the study, which appears in the April issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5293 - Posted: 04.16.2004

MADISON, Wis. -- There is more to beauty than meets the stranger's eye, according to results from three studies examining the influence of non-physical traits on people's perception of physical attractiveness. The results, which show that people perceive physical appeal differently when they look at those they know versus strangers, are published in the recently released March issue of Evolution and Human Behavior. In many studies evaluating physical attractiveness, people are often shown an array of strangers' photos, computer-generated images or line drawings and asked to identify which ones, based on differences in physical features, are most attractive. Results from these studies suggest that physically attractive traits include high degrees of bilateral facial symmetries, such as eyes that are identical in shape and size, and waist-to-hip ratios of 0.7 for women and 0.9 for men. "You can find study after study that focuses on which waist-to-hip ratios or particular facial features people find physically attractive, and these studies have captured popular attention," says Kevin Kniffin, an honorary fellow in the anthropology department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an adjunct assistant professor at Binghamton University. Copyright © 2004 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 5292 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(Kingston, ON) – Queen's psychologists have discovered that our ability to assess how other people are feeling relies on two specific areas of the brain. The findings, published in the April issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, are expected to have implications for the treatment of developmental disorders such as autism. Led by Mark Sabbagh, the study is supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). Also on the team, from the Queen's Psychology Department, are Margaret Moulson and Kate Harkness. The study helps us understand the neural bases of everyday "theory of mind": our ability to explain behaviour in terms of mental states like intentions and desires. "What we're showing is that an important first step [in theory of mind] is being able to decode other people's mental states, and that this skill is carried out within a very specific neural pathway,"says Dr. Sabbagh. The researchers used a technique called event-related potential.This involves fitting people with what looks like a hairnet containing 128 sponge electrodes that attach to their scalps and record electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. Images of eyes conveying different emotions (e.g. anger, sadness, embarrassment) are shown to the subjects, who are then asked to identify both the mental state and gender of the person in each picture, based solely on seeing that person's eyes.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 5291 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANNE McILROY Young children with sleep problems are more likely to grow up into teens who drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and use illegal drugs, a new study has found. Researchers have already made the connection with sleep problems and alcohol abuse in grownups, but this is the first study to draw the link between children who have trouble sleeping and the later use of alcohol and drugs. Maria Wong, a researcher in the psychiatry department at the University of Michigan, looked at data from a study of 275 boys that began 16 years ago. When the boys were aged three to five, their mothers were asked if their child had had trouble sleeping in the past six months, or if he seemed overtired. When the boys were adolescents, aged 12 to 14, they answered questions about how much they smoked, drank alcohol and used illegal drugs. (They were guaranteed anonymity.) It turned out that the boys who had had trouble sleeping as toddlers were twice as likely to smoke cigarettes or marijuana, drink alcohol or use other drugs early in their adolescence. © Copyright 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Sleep
Link ID: 5290 - Posted: 06.24.2010