From Adam Ant to Nick Hornby, everyone seems to be opening up about depression. But is the therapy culture actually making us ill? 'If you give it your little finger it will soon have your whole hand,' Sigmund Freud said of psychoanalysis in 1900. He had obviously seen the future. Britain in the twenty-first century means speaking freely and frankly about the state of our minds, about being depressed or being anxious or taking antidepressants. Our conversations are littered with psychobabble. As sociology professor Frank Furedi says in his new book Therapy Culture, we live in a culture that takes emotions very seriously. We admit freely to breakdowns, depression, mania, anxiety, any number of mental illnesses - indeed in some circles it would be seen as very poor form not to do so. © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 4515 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Are violence and aggression genetic or a response to our upbringing? As this ScienCentral news video reports, psychologists say it's both–but parenting can shape the effects of childrens' genes. Nurture just might trump nature when it comes to certain aspects of behavioral development. Psychologists who studied rhesus monkeys, which share over 92 percent of their genetic material with us, found that mothers not only took care of their young but also corrected any bad behavior. "Mothers are very good at giving the kind of inputs that change behavior," says J. Dee Higley, a research psychologist at the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism , "but that's happening at the very time that the brain is changing, when it needs that kind of input. It's almost as if evolution said, 'let's put mothers there so that the brain gets the right kind of input.'" © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Aggression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 4514 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DENISE GRADY A hormone that suppresses appetite has been made into a nasal spray which, in a preliminary test in 15 people, safely entered the bloodstream and appeared to reduce hunger pangs. "As the very earliest phase human study, this has proven extremely promising," said Dr. Stephen R. Bloom, a professor of endocrinology at the Imperial College School of Medicine in London, who ran the test. But Dr. Bloom cautioned that the study was a safety test and was not designed to determine whether the hormone could reduce people's appetites or help them lose weight. Longer and larger studies will be needed to assess the spray's safety and effectiveness, he said. The product is still experimental and is not available to the public. It will probably not be approved or marketed for years. Its maker, Nastech, a small company based in Bothell, Wash., has not yet applied to the Food and Drug Administration. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 4513 - Posted: 11.13.2003

NEW ORLEANS, - New studies find much to recommend in pregnancy and motherhood. Findings include that: pregnancy produces heightened smell sensitivity; suckling one’s young puts brain reward systems into high gear; lactation increases the rate of wound healing; and motherhood protects against stress. Morning sickness, food cravings, and food aversions are not the only side effects of pregnancy. Many women also say that they perceived changes in their chemical senses during pregnancy; perhaps a certain dish had a different flavor than they were used to or they were especially sensitive to an odor in their environment. Indeed, a new study finds that almost 70 percent of 126 pregnant women questioned claimed to have abnormal smell sensitivity early in pregnancy. A majority of these women also reported that they perceived some odors to be stronger than normal, says Daniel Broman, a PhD student at Umea University in Umea, Sweden. Broman and his colleagues found that, for example, the smells of cooking odors, cigarette smoke, perfume, and coffee were reported to be experienced as stronger among more than 30 percent early in pregnancy. Furthermore, almost 60 percent reported food aversions early in pregnancy and, interestingly, about 70 percent of those who reported abnormal smell sensitivity early in pregnancy also reported food aversions. Copyright © 2003 Society for Neuroscience

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4512 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New Orleans, -- Investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that stimulating the brain's subthalamic nucleus (STN) to control motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease has an unintended consequence: It interferes with cognitive function. When given cognitive tests, patients performed better when their stimulators were turned off than when they were turned on. The team will present its findings at 4 p.m. CT on Wed., Nov. 12, at the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. "It's clear that stimulation can provide a great deal of benefit to patients with Parkinson's disease," says principal investigator Tamara Hershey, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine. "But when we looked at cognitive function, patients did better when their stimulators were turned off, although these effects were subtle."

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 4511 - Posted: 11.13.2003

Dyscalculia appears to cloud number images. HELEN PEARSON Scientists have homed in on a brain region that leaves some people struggling with mathematics. Their research might point up better ways to teach numbers1. The study looked at people with dyscalculia - the mathematical equivalent of dyslexia. Up to 6% of children are thought to suffer from the condition; they toil with times tables and can find it tough to add small numbers even as adults. Dyscalculics have abnormal pulses of activity in a brain furrow called the right intraparietal sulcus, find Nicolas Molko of INSERM, the French Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, and his colleagues. The fissure helps the mind to conjure spatial images. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 4510 - Posted: 06.24.2010

TB drug plus virtual reality relieves fear of heights. HELEN R. PILCHER A common antibacterial drug has helped phobics to overcome their fear of heights. Combined with standard behavioural therapy, D-cycloserine (DCS) speeded recovery fourfold compared with therapy alone. An estimated 19 million Americans suffer from anxiety disorders, including phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. "The same treatment may also help these people," says Michael Davis of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who helped to conduct the study. Behavioural therapy - where sufferers are gradually exposed to their fear in an attempt to modify their response to it - can be expensive and time consuming. In the United States, four months of weekly sessions cost around $3,000. Hastening recovery lowers the cost of treatment, Davis told the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, this week. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 4509 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Oxytocin may help humans bond. HELEN R. PILCHER Trust begets trust - and the hormone oxytocin, research reveals. The chemical messenger may help humans to bond, researchers told this week's Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. People's oxytocin levels rise when they receive a signal of trust, says Paul Zak from Claremont Graduate University in California. Those with the highest hormone levels are more likely to be generous in return and so are more trusting, he says. Zak's team gave 19 people $10 apiece. Each person was invited to share their reward with an anonymous recipient. The recipients' money was then tripled and they were allowed to send a share back to the donors. The researchers found that 54% of recipients returned money to donors. Those who gave and returned most generously had the highest oxytocin levels. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 4508 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists say they have discovered what happens in the brain when someone falls in love. They studied chemical reactions in men and women who were all in the early stages of relationships. Research, published by the Society for Neuroscience, found activity in areas of the brain which are linked to energy and elation. But scans found women's brains showed emotional responses, while men's showed activity linked to sexual arousal. Researchers took functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of the brains of 17 young men and women to see what was happening in the brain of someone in love. They were alternately shown a photo of someone they loved and one of someone they knew, but were emotionally neutral towards. (C) BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Brain imaging
Link ID: 4507 - Posted: 11.13.2003

By Erik Strand Scientists have discovered that a metabolite of nicotine may help improve memory and protect brain cells against dementia. Known as cotinine, the drug has neither the addictive properties nor the harmful side effects of nicotine, yet may still be potent enough for therapeutic use, say researchers at the Medical College of Georgia. Pharmacologist Jerry Buccafusco and his team noticed that while nicotine is known to enhance memory and cognition, the effects last long after nicotine has disappeared from the body. They began to suspect a longer acting substance. "Cotinine lasts 10 times longer in the blood [than nicotine]. We decided to study cotinine as a pharmacological drug in its own right," says Buccafusco. In the first of three experiments, researchers found that rhesus monkeys that had received cotinine performed better on tests of memory than did those who did not receive the drug. © Copyright 1991-2003 Sussex Publishers

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 4506 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Research Project Is Designed to Help NFL Gain Insight on Widespread Injury By Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post Staff Writer OTTAWA -- The scene plays out on TV screens every Sunday. The quarterback throws a pass, the wide receiver turns to catch it, and then, in a timed move as subtle as a battering ram, the safety slams into the side of the pass-catcher's head. Maybe the receiver holds the ball; maybe not. Maybe he gets up; maybe not. "Actually, it takes about 15 milliseconds," said biomechanical engineer Christopher Withnall, winding the blurred videotape back and forth, frame-by-frame, the receiver's head rebounding like a billiard ball again and again. "We can see the moment right before the hit and the moment right after, but not the exact moment. The injury occurs in the blink of an eye." Withnall researches concussions for the NFL as part of a $2 million project that is the most ambitious study of its kind ever undertaken. For a league in which several high-profile players in recent years have missed games because of head injuries or in some cases have been forced to retire, the study has given researchers unprecedented information on how and why concussions occur. It also should provide insights into how to prevent and treat them, and how to lessen their lingering after-effects. © 2003 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 4505 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Robert Sapolsky and Paul Ehrlich DISCOVER Vol. 24 No. 11 | November 2003 In Darwin, Minnesota, the modern pilgrim can observe what is claimed to be the world’s largest ball of twine made by one person. Eleven feet tall, weighing in at 17,400 pounds, the ball is displayed in a Plexiglas gazebo. The callow sophisticate, passing afternoons in Paris museums amid roomfuls of Ming vases or dinosaur pelvises, might guess that a ball of twine, however large, could have only limited public appeal. But the town of Darwin knows better, making the display the centerpiece of its annual Twine Ball Days festival. This sort of thing is not an anomaly. Consider the display in Branson, Missouri, of the world’s largest twine ball produced by group effort, a whopping 41.5 feet in circumference. In Jackson, Wyoming, you can find the world’s largest ball of barbed wire, all 5,290 pounds of it. Why should anyone in his right mind want to see these things? Why are cheesy performers advertised as “the one and only” ? Why is a one-in-a-million postage stamp with an airplane accidentally printed upside down worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? And why is it impossible to resist looking at a picture in the Guinness Book of World Records of the world’s longest mustache? It’s not because it makes us reflect on the folly that is human. It’s not the challenge—“That’s it; I’m going to stop shaving today.” Why are we attracted not only to the biggest version of almost anything but also to the smallest, the weirdest, the first, the last, or the only? Why does something gain value merely because it is rare and authentic—the odd voyeuristic pleasure that comes from seeing on display the salt and pepper shakers from the mess kit George Washington may have clutched as he crossed the Delaware? Is it mere curiosity, or is it something more? © 2003 The Walt Disney Company.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 4504 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Could a single trip on a piece of African rootbark help a junkie kick the habit? That was the claim in the 1960s, and now iboga is back in the spotlight. But is it a miracle cure? Daniel Pinchbeck decided to give it a go. And life, he says, will never be the same again... In 1962, Howard Lotsof, a 19-year-old heroin addict in New York, ordered from a chemist iboga, a plant used in West African rituals, and tried it for extra kicks. After consuming the bitter rootbark powder, he experienced a visionary tour of his early memories. Thirty hours later, when the effects had subsided, he found that he had lost all craving for heroin, without withdrawal symptoms of any kind. He said he then gave iboga to seven other addicts and five stopped taking drugs immediately afterwards. In 1985, Lotsof patented the ibogaine molecule for the purposes of addiction treatment, but could not get his treatment approved. In the interim years, ibogaine had been declared, along with LSD and several other psychedelic molecules, an illegal "schedule one" substance, with potential for abuse and no medical value. Although it found dedicated support among a ragtag group of countercultural activists and left-over Yippies, in 1995 the National Institutes of Health discontinued research into the substance, and pharmaceutical companies have since ignored it, perhaps due to low profit potential. © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4503 - Posted: 06.24.2010

What has the virtuous life of a 17th-century philosopher got to do with going out for lunch, the need for a second Enlightenment, basing feeling and emotion in maps of the body - and being furious with your boss? For the past decade, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has been weaving such strands together in his books, the latest of which, Looking for Spinoza, was published in May. He has provided New Scientist with some fascinating discussions over the past year Your first major book had you tangling with Descartes, now you've taken on Spinoza. Is this an odd thing for a neuroscientist to do? I regard philosophy as very important, both in the past but also in the present. Philosophy incorporated all of the sciences, and as new sciences develop they sort of peel off from philosophy. But that doesn't mean philosophy lost its reasons to exist: first, because the continuity of ideas is very important to preserve; second, because the heart of philosophy today is an attempt to reach conceptual clarity, and that remains a needed commodity in science. Of course, one could say that conceptual clarity is exactly what a scientist should achieve anyway, and so there is no need to bring philosophy into the process. However, I think that a dialogue with colleagues whose business it is to find defects in arguments and scrutinise the interpretations and conclusions of scientists is a good thing to have. The collaboration is needed and could be fruitful, but it requires a certain humility on both sides, and open minds. I also believe that a collaboration between neurobiology and other human sciences is most desirable. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 4502 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Geneticists have found strong evidence implicating a developmental gene in autism, they announced today at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics in Los Angeles. Although it’s not known what the variant of the gene does, the finding backs the idea that something goes wrong with the developing brain. “This is a truly exciting finding,” says Eric Courchesne of the University of California, San Diego. “If replicated, this could lead to some very novel approaches to early detection.” Because symptoms often start to appear at 2 years of age or so, parents have blamed childhood vaccines received at that age. Scientists have learned, however, that something is unusual about these children even before diagnosis. Courchesne, for example, has shown that the autistic brain is already strikingly abnormal by the first months of life. Children with autism usually have an abnormal cerebellum, a region that participates in many processes that go awry in autism, such as the ability to control attention. The cerebellum-autism link intrigued Jim Millonig, a mouse geneticist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Piscataway. He knew that in mice, a gene called ENGRAILED 2 is involved in development of the cerebellum. Moreover, in humans the gene is located on a chromosomal region called 7q, which other studies have linked to autism. Copyright © 2003 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 4501 - Posted: 06.24.2010

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Researchers at Brown University and the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., have found a physical connection between the herpes simplex virus and amyloid precursor protein, a protein that breaks down to form a major component of the amyloid plaques that are consistently present in the brains of persons with Alzheimer’s disease. Amyloid precursor protein – or APP – breaks down to form beta-amyloid. There is strong evidence, according to the researchers, that beta-amyloid is the underlying cause of Alzheimer’s. While the scientists caution that no conclusions about Alzheimer’s can be drawn from their findings, Dr. Elaine Bearer, senior research scientist and associate professor in Brown’s Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, believes the work does in fact link the common herpes virus of cold sores with the neurodegenerative disorder. Bearer is also a summer investigator at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 4500 - Posted: 06.24.2010

STANFORD, Calif. - People with depression are five times more likely to have a breathing-related sleep disorder than non-depressed people, according to a study at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The study is the first to show a link between depression and sleep apnea along with its related disorders. Although it remains unclear how the conditions are linked, Maurice Ohayon, MD, PhD, said his study should encourage physicians to test depressed patients for this type of sleep disorder. "Physicians who see people with depression shouldn't stop at the first diagnosis, but instead look into the presence of a breathing-related sleep disorder," said Ohayon, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. His study appears in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Keyword: Depression; Sleep
Link ID: 4499 - Posted: 11.07.2003

Multiple sclerosis patients report some relief in pot trial. HELEN PEARSON Cannabis may soothe symptoms of multiple sclerosis, concludes the first large-scale clinical trial of the drug's perceived benefit to sufferers. Legally, the drug remains largely out of bounds. The British study is the one of the strongest scientific endorsements of patients' anecdotal evidence that cannabis helps to relieve the pain of multiple sclerosis (MS). John Zajicek of the University of Plymouth and his team gave 630 patients either a placebo, cannabis extract, or a synthetic form of marijuana's most active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). After 15 weeks, 60% of patients taking the drugs reported that it helped their pain and muscle stiffness, compared with 46% of those on the placebo. It also helped them to walk more easily. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4498 - Posted: 06.24.2010

— Researchers have discovered some of the basic control signals that govern the organization of the spinal cord in the developing embryo — findings that quite likely will apply to the brain as well. Insights such as these are yielding new information about an underlying code involving homeobox, or Hox, regulatory genes that orchestrate spinal cord development. The researchers, led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator Thomas Jessell at Columbia University, published their findings in the October 30, 2003, issue of the journal Nature. Jessell collaborated on the studies with HHMI research associate Jeremy Dasen at Columbia and Jeh-Ping Liu at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. The identity and function of the control signals that govern the formation of neuronal columns in the brain and spinal cord are two of the big questions facing developmental neurobiologists. Columns contain bundles of neurons that are grouped according to function. Despite their localized groupings, the influence of columns on connectivity may be felt at quite a distance because the axons extending from neurons innervate other areas of the body. ©2003 Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Keyword: Development of the Brain; ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 4497 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bill makes it hard to show harassment Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau Washington -- By adding just two words to a bill reauthorizing the 31-year-old Marine Mammal Protection Act, the House Resources Committee waded into a bitter battle Wednesday between the Navy and environmentalists and perhaps gave several industries the ability to operate more freely in the oceans. The committee, chaired by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, inserted "biologically significant'' into the definition of behavior disruptions of such mammals as dolphins, whale and seals that are classified as illegal harassment. Supporters of the change, which passed on a voice vote, said it was necessary to help the Navy experiment with long-range, low-frequency sonar used to detect new quiet diesel-powered submarines. But detractors say the wording will make it harder for prosecutors to prove cases of harassment under the act because they'll find it difficult to show any specific action is "biologically significant'' to a single animal or a group of mammals. ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 4496 - Posted: 06.24.2010