Empathy lights up the same parts of the brain as personal injury. LAURA NELSON The ability to appreciate other people's agony is achieved by the same parts of the brain that we use to experience pain for ourselves. When we encounter a painful stimulus, such as an electric shock, signals travel from the site of the stimulus up to the brain. This is then translated into both a physical and an emotional response. Tania Singer, an imaging neuroscientist at University College London, and her colleagues performed an experiment to see whether any parts of this process happens in the brains of people who aren't experiencing the pain themselves, but are simply empathizing with someone who is. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Emotions
Link ID: 5011 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Knowing our partner is in pain automatically triggers affective pain processing regions of our brains, according to new research by University College London (UCL) scientists. The study, published in the 20th February edition of the journal Science, asked whether empathizing with the pain of others involves the re-activation of the entire pain network underlying the processing of pain in our selves. The results suggest that empathy for pain of others only involves the affective, but not sensory component of our pain experience. The team, at UCL's Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, set out to find out what happens to our brains when we empathise with the feelings of others, how the brain understands how something feels for another human, and whether such empathetic responses are triggered rather automatically by the mere perception of someone else being in pain. The UCL team investigated pain-related empathy in 16 couples, under an assumption that couples are likely to feel empathy for each other. Brain activity in the woman was assessed while painful stimulation was applied to her or to her partner's right hand through an electrode attached to the back of the hand. Both hands were placed on a tilted board allowing the subject, with help of a mirror system, to see both hands. Behind this board was a large screen upon which flashes of different colours were presented. The colours indicated whether to expect painful or non painful stimulation. This procedure enabled to measure pain-related brain activation when pain was applied to the scanned subject (the 'pain matrix') as well as to her partner (empathy for pain).

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Emotions
Link ID: 5010 - Posted: 02.20.2004

Scientists hope they'll serve as brain repair kit Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer A mysterious type of stem cell found in the brain appears to be a possible wellspring of fresh nerve cells and, when something goes haywire, the starting point of a common form of tumor, scientists are reporting. The finding lays new ground for understanding the fundamental biology of stem cells in the adult brain. Scientists hope these cells and the signaling molecules that govern their fate might someday serve as a repair kit for treating brain injury, strokes or neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's. The study resulted from a collaboration of neuroscientists and brain surgeons at UCSF Medical Center, led by Dr. Nader Sanai, a 26-year-old neurosurgery resident. Dr. Mitchel Berger, chair of neurosurgery, and stem- cell expert Arturo Alvarez-Buylla were senior authors. ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Stem Cells
Link ID: 5009 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MIREYA NAVARRO With typical bluntness Sue Johanson tells older men and women to get over body image: the "turkey neck," the "wear and tear," the hormonal deficiencies. But in her cheerful, no-nonsense style she adds that there are creams, patches and pills to help them, and if all else fails, that they can always kiss and cuddle. "You can still have a great deal of fun," she said recently in a rare speech before a United States audience, a group of sex-toy saleswomen at a conference in Las Vegas. Ms. Johanson, who won't reveal her age but looks like a 70-something grandmother who knits and makes sourdough biscuits (she does both), is having a lot of fun herself just talking about sex. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5008 - Posted: 02.19.2004

By SAM LUBELL THE red curtain opens to reveal an intimidating auditorium. A bored audience stares back at you. One person in the crowd seems to be falling asleep; another coughs loudly and stretches his neck. You notice that your palms are sweaty. Your stomach is fluttering. You wonder whether you will pass out. But this is no ordinary panic attack: it is a virtual scene that was created to help people overcome anxiety about public speaking. This slice of virtual reality and other similarly stressful scenes are the work of a Georgia-based company called Virtually Better, which creates virtual environments with 3-D imaging software for use by psychologists, psychiatrists and researchers. A few years ago, the full impact of a bored audience could only be imagined by a patient with a therapist's help, or in some cases recreated at great cost with mockups and actors. But with recent advances in research and improvements in hardware and software, virtual reality has become a tool to help patients overcome fears and anxieties. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 5007 - Posted: 02.19.2004

The great unresolved question - where does the mind end and the body begin? - has always intrigued AS Byatt. A S Byatt When I was a student in the 1950s, we did a lot of thinking - in very literary terms - about the body-mind problem. We were in some sense mesmerised by TS Eliot's notion of the dissociation of sensibility that had taken place in the 17th century, and had somehow wrenched apart language, the body, and the thinking mind. Tennyson and Browning, the Victorian stalwarts, Eliot pronounced, were poets, and they thought, but they "did not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose". His phraseology is imagist or symbolist, but the poets who, according to Eliot, did achieve this paradisal, undissociated unity of response were the 17th-century metaphysical wits, Donne, Herbert, Marvell. I started to write a thesis on 17th-century religious metaphor partly because of this paradisal imagery. But also because of a niggling doubt and anxiety. Those religious poems were informed by a set of beliefs that despised the body, its sensual apparatus, and its desires. They dramatised the conflict, it is true. They made delicious sensual metaphors for pure spiritual delights. But it was conflict, not undissociated harmony, that gave them their energy. This is clear in Marvell's "A Dialogue between the Soul and Body" where the soul describes the body as "bolts of bone" and "manacles" of hands, and cries that it is Here blinded with an eye, and there Deaf with the drumming of an ear, A soul hung up as 'twere, in chains Of nerves and arteries and veins... The body, on the other hand, feels it is "impaled" on the upright soul, and built by the soul for sin, So architects do square and hew Green trees that in the forest grew. © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 5006 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new study is showing that the parents of ADHD children may also have attention deficit hyperactive disorder. As this ScienCentral News video reports, that means curing the child may include treating the parent. Lew Mills, a therapist in San Francisco, and his son Matthew have both been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, which has made effective parenting more challenging than it might be under normal circumstances. "I feel like a good parent but I also feel like there are some things I just can't do and I don't know why sometimes," says Mills. "It's frustrating. Because I have ADHD myself it adds onto all the things that I have a hard time getting done and organizing…in my own life and career, so it kind of adds to that load." ADHD affects three to five percent of all children, perhaps as many as two million American children, and two to three times more boys than girls. The most common ADHD behaviors fall into three categories: inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity; people with ADHD can have trouble with things like sitting still and focusing on tasks. In many cases, medications such as Ritalin are prescribed to children with ADHD. © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 5005 - Posted: 06.24.2010

MADISON - Human neural stem cells, exposed in a lab dish to the steroid DHEA, exhibit a remarkable uptick in growth rates, suggesting that the hormone may play a role in helping the brain produce new cells, according to a new study published this week in the online editions of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The new work, conducted by a team of scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides some of the first direct evidence of the biological effects of DHEA on the human nervous system, according to Clive Svendsen, the study's senior author and an authority on brain stem cells at UW-Madison's Waisman Center. "What we saw was that DHEA significantly increased the division of the cells," says Svendsen, a UW-Madison professor of anatomy and neurology. "It also increased the number of neurons produced by the stem cells, prompting increased neurogenesis of cells in culture."

Keyword: Stem Cells; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5004 - Posted: 02.19.2004

UCSF researchers have made a notable advance in the effort to illuminate the existence of adult stem cells in the human brain, identifying a ribbon of stem cells that potentially could be used to develop strategies for regenerating damaged brain tissue - and that could offer new insight into the most common type of brain tumor. The study, conducted by investigators in the UCSF Department of Neurological Surgery, is the cover story in the Feb. 19 issue of Nature. The researchers conducted their study on brain specimens (from neurological resections and autopsies) containing the lining of the brain's fluid-filled cavity, a region known as the subventricular zone. There, they discovered a sheet of the brain's most ubiquitous cell, the astrocyte - traditionally thought of as a supportive cell for neurons in the adult brain – and determined in cell culture studies that the cell has the capacity to function as a neural stem cell. They also detected fresh, young neurons within the astrocytic region that likely are the progeny of these stem cells, the researchers say

Keyword: Stem Cells
Link ID: 5003 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Study hints that prenatal toxins can trigger psychiatric disease. HELEN PEARSON Babies exposed to lead in the womb may be at increased risk of developing schizophrenia as adults, US researchers have revealed. Scientists know that toxins such as lead and alcohol can harm a mother's unborn child and trigger developmental problems during childhood. But the new study is one of the first to show that this damage can precipitate disorders that strike decades later. Schizophrenia is usually diagnosed in the late teens or early twenties. Ezra Susser of Columbia University, New York and his team tested stored blood samples collected from expectant California mothers between 1959 and 1966. They compared the blood lead levels of 44 women whose children went on to develop schizophrenia with 75 others whose children did not. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 5002 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Women scorn each other at certain times of the month in fight for men. We're all guilty of making a snide comment about someone's appearance at one time or another. But a new study hints that women may instinctively use catty comments as a weapon in the dating game. The research shows that when women are at the most fertile point in their monthly cycle they tend to have a lower opinion of other women's looks1. And that's not just because of mood swings. Menstrual phase had no effect on how the same women rated the looks of men, reports Maryanne Fisher of York University in Toronto, Canada. Fisher asked 57 women and 47 men to look at pictures of female and male faces, and rate their attractiveness on a seven-point scale from 'extremely unattractive' to 'extremely attractive'. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5001 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DURHAM, N.C. -- Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators at Duke University Medical Center have linked a gene previously shown to play a role in learning and memory to the early manifestations of drug addiction in the brain. Although scientists had previously speculated that similar brain processes underlie aspects of learning and addiction, the current study in mice is the first to identify a direct molecular link between the two. The findings suggest new genetic approaches for assessing an individual's susceptibility to drug addiction. They also illuminate the complex series of molecular events that underlie addiction, the researchers said, and ultimately may lead to new therapeutic methods to interfere with that process, thereby curbing the cravings common to addiction. The Duke-based study, which examined genes involved in the brain's response to cocaine, appears in the Feb. 19, 2004, issue of Neuron. The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Zaffaroni Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. © 2001-2004 Duke University Medical Center.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 5000 - Posted: 06.24.2010

EDMONTON - By implanting computer chips in the body, researchers in Alberta hope to make paralysed limbs work again. Scientists at the University of Alberta developed a device to stimulate nerves to take a step. The device helped Edgar Jackson of Calgary regain the ability to walk. Five years ago, a motorcycle accident left him a quadriplegic. A video shows the difference the device made. Jackson went from struggling to put one foot in front of the other to walking with ease. Here's how it works. A sensor attached to Jackson's leg recognizes when his foot is being lifted. Then an electric shock is triggered to stimulate the nerve, moving the foot into position to take a normal step. Copyright © CBC 2004

Keyword: Muscles; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 4999 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new brain scan could give doctors as much greater advance warning of whether cancer treatment is working. Scientists were able to predict weeks earlier than is currently possible whether brain tumours were responding to drug treatment. The technology - nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) - has been modified from one used in chemistry labs. The research, by the Institute of Cancer Research, is published in the British Journal of Cancer. Scientists used the technology to test whether a type of brain tumour called a glioma was likely to respond to treatment with the drug temozolmide. The drug works by causing lethal DNA damage in cancer cells. It is licensed in the UK for use against gliomas that have returned since first being treated. (C)BBC

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 4998 - Posted: 02.18.2004

By Becky McCall in Seattle The technique relies on electrical signals in the brain A controversial technique for identifying a criminal mind using involuntary brainwaves that could reveal guilt or innocence is about to take centre stage in a last-chance court appeal against a death-row conviction in the US. The technique, called "brain fingerprinting", has already been tested by the FBI and has now become part of the key evidence to overturn the murder conviction of Jimmy Ray Slaughter who is facing execution in Oklahoma. Brain Fingerprinting, developed by Dr Larry Farwell, chief scientist and founder of Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, is a method of reading the brain's involuntary electrical activity in response to a subject being shown certain images relating to a crime. Unlike the polygraph or lie detector to which it is often compared, the accuracy of this technology lies in its ability to pick up the electrical signal, known as a p300 wave, before the suspect has time to affect the output. "It is highly scientific, brain fingerprinting doesn't have anything to do with the emotions, whether a person is sweating or not; it simply detects scientifically if that information is stored in the brain," says Dr Farwell. "It doesn't depend upon the subjective interpretation of the person conducting the test. The computer monitors the information and comes up with information present or information absent." (C)BBC

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 4997 - Posted: 02.18.2004

By Paul Rincon, BBC News Online science staff The human brain may have started evolving its unique characteristics much earlier than has previously been supposed, according to new research. Hominid brains were being reorganised before the growth in brain size thought to have established a gulf between human and ape abilities, it is claimed. The conclusions come from analysis of a small-brained fossil hominid - or human-like primate - from South Africa. The authors report their findings in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol. Because the brain creates a mirror image of its surface inside the skull, scientists can create a cast - or endocast - by applying several layers of rubber paint to the cavity. When dry, this leaves a hollow rubber model of the brain that can be removed. The researchers studied an endocast of the brain of Stw 505, a hominid specimen belonging to the species Australopithecus africanus that was unearthed in the Sterkfontein caves in South Africa in the 1980s. (C)BBC

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 4996 - Posted: 02.18.2004

By MARY DUENWALD By April 12, ephedra will disappear from stores and Web sites that sell dietary supplements, by order of the Food and Drug Administration. But that does not mean the herb will entirely drop out of sight. The agency's ban on ephedra specifically excludes uses of the herb in traditional Asian medicine. Acupuncturists, herbalists and other practitioners of Oriental medicine routinely dispense teas, pills and powders containing ma huang, the type of ephedra grown in China, to treat colds, asthma, persistent cough, headache, water retention and other maladies. The ban on dietary supplements containing ephedra, announced in December, was published by the agency on Wednesday and will take effect 60 days later. It targets the ephedra supplements that have been advertised for weight loss, muscle building and athletic performance. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 4995 - Posted: 02.18.2004

With federal indictments handed out over the weekend in an illegal steroid distribution scheme, professional sports is under scrutiny. Eager to emulate their favorite athletes, as many as 1 in 18 teens may have tried steroids. But at what cost? This ScienCentral News video takes a closer look. Anabolic steroids, sometimes called "roids," are synthetic derivatives of the male hormone testosterone. They are used to increase muscle mass and strength, and they are illegal. But that hasn't stopped teens from using them. In a culture obsessed with physical fitness and the pursuit of the perfect body the pressure's on to obtain the ideal. Surf the web, flip through a magazine, turn on the TV— these mediums are saturated with images of rippling muscles and six-pack abs. According to Dr. Linn Goldberg, head of the Division of Health Promotion and Sports Medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, the media has played an even more direct role in promoting steroids. He explains that the term "on steroids" is used to sell everything from cars to computers to post-it notes, and that "on steroids" is implied to be a good thing, denoting "bigger, better and faster." "You would never say something was 'on heroin'," he says. © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 4994 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service Women judge the attractiveness other women more harshly when at their most fertile, suggests a new study. The phenomenon could be a strategy to devalue potential rivals, says the psychologist behind the work - being bitchy about others could help a woman win the attention of a desirable man. Theories of sexual selection in most species usually concentrate on how males compete for females. But recent theories for humans suggest there is intrasexual competition among females as well, as males can vary markedly in their abilities as providers and protectors. Maryanne Fisher, a psychologist at York University in Toronto, Canada, decided to try to find evidence for female competition by presenting heterosexual students with photos of faces. She found that when women were in the most fertile phase of their menstrual cycles, they rated the attractiveness of other women lower than when they were not. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 4993 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Two-pronged approach synergizes growth BOSTON -- Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School have advanced a decades-old quest to get injured nerves to regenerate. By combining two strategies – activating nerve cells' natural growth state and using gene therapy to mute the effects of growth-inhibiting factors – they achieved about three times more regeneration of nerve fibers than previously attained. The study involved the optic nerve, which connects nerve cells in the retina with visual centers in the brain, but the Children's team has already begun to extend the approach to nerves damaged by spinal cord injury, stroke, and certain neurodegenerative diseases. Results appear in the February 18th Journal of Neuroscience. Normally, injured nerve fibers, known as axons, can't regenerate. Axons conduct impulses away from the body of the nerve cell, forming connections with other nerve cells or with muscles. One reason axons can't regenerate has been known for about 15 years: Several proteins in the myelin, an insulating sheath wrapped around the axons, strongly suppress growth. Over the past two years, researchers have developed techniques that disable the inhibitory action of myelin proteins, but this approach by itself has produced relatively little axon growth.

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 4992 - Posted: 06.24.2010