Creative people more open to stimuli from environment by Jessica Whiteside -- Psychologists from U of T and Harvard University have identified one of the biological bases of creativity The study in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says the brains of creative people appear to be more open to incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment. Other people's brains might shut out this same information through a process called "latent inhibition" - defined as an animal's unconscious capacity to ignore stimuli that experience has shown are irrelevant to its needs. Through psychological testing, the researchers showed that creative individuals are much more likely to have low levels of latent inhibition. "This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra information constantly streaming in from the environment," says co-author and U of T psychology professor Jordan Peterson. "The normal person classifies an object, and then forgets about it, even though that object is much more complex and interesting than he or she thinks. The creative person, by contrast, is always open to new possibilities."

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Intelligence
Link ID: 4315 - Posted: 10.01.2003

STANFORD, Calif. - A good night's sleep may be one weapon in the fight against cancer, according to researchers at Stanford University Medical Center. Their work is among the first to piece together the link between mental well-being and cancer recovery. Previous studies have found people with cancer who go through group therapy or have a strong social network fare better than those with weaker social support. The question has been how psychosocial factors exert their influence on cancer cells. David Spiegel, MD, the Jack, Lulu and Sam Willson Professor in the School of Medicine, and Sandra Sephton, PhD, Spiegel's former postdoctoral fellow now at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, suggest that a person's sleep/wake cycle might be the connection. Their work will be published in the October issue of Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. "Psychosocial factors affect your behavior patterns, such as exercise, what you eat and drink, and your sleep," Spiegel said. Of these factors, how well you sleep can seriously alter the balance of hormones in your body. This makes the sleep/wake cycle, also called the circadian rhythm, a good candidate for linking a person's social network to their cancer prognosis.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 4314 - Posted: 10.01.2003

Scientists have found out more information about how quickly very young children learn. They did it by tracking the eye movements of infants. As this ScienCentral News video reports, they found out that infants do indeed learn very quickly. At first, an infant doesn’t comprehend that if his mom leaves the room, she's going to come back. But eventually, babies do learn what psychologists call "object permanence" or "object concept." "The term has traditionally been used to describe sort of everyday common sense notions of how objects normally behave in the world,” explains Scott Johnson, a psychology professor at New York University . "If I were to take my keys out of my pocket, drop them on the floor, turn around walk somewhere else, and then come back, I would know that they would be on the floor and could pick them up and put them back in my pocket. I know that my keys still exist even though I can't see them, can't hear them, I'm not in physical contact with them. That's an object concept." © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4313 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War may be more than twice as likely to be stricken with Lou Gehrig's disease than members of the general population are, new findings suggest. What is more, the condition often strikes vets sooner than those who did not serve, according to the results of two studies published in the current issue of the journal Neurology. Some soldiers who completed tours of duty during the first Gulf conflict complained of ill health after their return home. Gulf War syndrome, which lists fatigue, joint pain, depression, balance problems and diarrhea among its symptoms, was first diagnosed in 1997 and is said to be linked to exposure to toxic chemicals. That same year, Robert Haley of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center began investigating a potential connection between time served in the Persian Gulf and Lou Gehrig's disease--amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)--after receiving a request from a 35-year-old veteran suffering from the fatal affliction. The researchers located 17 veterans under the age of 45 who were diagnosed with ALS between 1991 and 1998. Of these individuals, five were diagnosed in 1998--in contrast to the 1.38 cases expected for an age group of this size. "The increasing slope of the epidemic curve beginning three years after the Gulf War and still increasing in 1998 further supports a true excess. © 1996-2003 Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 4312 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The agonizing mental decline caused by Alzheimer's disease currently affects more than four million Americans. Although scientists are slowly beginning to understand the condition and its causes, it remains untreatable. Findings published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggest a new approach to treating the disease: using a drug known to be successful against a rare blood cancer. The drug Gleevec was approved for treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) in May of 2001. Paul Greengard of Rockefeller University and his colleagues investigated whether the drug can curtail the production of beta-amyloid, which forms the basis of the toxic plaques that interfere with brain function in people suffering from Alzheimer's. The researchers tested Gleevec in immature rat neurons and cultured human cells and found that levels of beta-amyloid decreased compared to control cells. What is more, the drug had a similar effect in live guinea pigs that have amyloid peptides comparable to those found in humans, with declines of up to 50 percent relative to control animals reported. © 1996-2003 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 4311 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Kenneth J. Bender, Pharm.D., M.A. A clinical trial of olanzapine (Zyprexa) to determine whether early intervention can delay or prevent onset of psychosis in prodromally symptomatic patients is underway (McGlashan et al., 2003). Prevention Through Risk Identification Management and Education (PRIME) is being conducted at four sites: Yale University; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; the University of Toronto; and Foothills Hospital, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Although a prodromal phase of psychotic illness is usually recognized in retrospect after the first psychotic break, study investigators have employed new criteria to diagnose and treat prodromal patients. Sixty study subjects were identified through responders to advertisements about mental illness development or through referrals from practitioners and health services receiving study recruitment materials on early intervention. The PRIME study is the first randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of an atypical antipsychotic in this newly defined clinical population. The study incorporates long-term phases with and without medication to ascertain rate of psychotic-onset conversion in this population, as well as the safety and efficacy of antipsychotic intervention at this stage of illness development. © 2003 Psychiatric Times. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 4310 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY For all that has been written and spoken about addiction as a medical disease, most people, including most physicians, understand little about what draws people to drugs and keeps them hooked, often despite severe consequences and repeated attempts to quit. A better understanding of the pull and tug of addiction can help those who are hooked and those who want the monkey off their backs for good. The savings in life-years, quality of life and lost income can be huge, not to mention the costs of drug-instigated crime and medical care. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4309 - Posted: 09.30.2003

David Salt, ABC Science Online — A person's mental ability as a child could well be an indicator of their chances of surviving to a ripe old age, according to a landmark study which has followed up on surveys carried out in the first half of the last century. Professor Ian Deary from the Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, presented findings of an ongoing investigation during a two-day symposium on aging held last week at the Australian National University. "This is by far the longest follow-up study of mental ability differences in the scientific literature," said Deary, who led the research. The study was remarkable because it spanned a long time period, included a large number of people and managed to get around some of the problems faced by previous studies into how age affects mental ability. Copyright © 2003 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Intelligence
Link ID: 4308 - Posted: 06.24.2010

But OHSU researcher says jump in BDNF, neurogenesis may not be beneficial PORTLAND, Ore. – Exercise enthusiasts have more reasons to put on their running shoes in the morning, but an Oregon Health & Science University scientist says they shouldn't step up their work-outs just yet. A study published today in the journal Neuroscience, journal of the International Brain Research Organization, confirmed that exercise increases the chemical BDNF – brain-derived neurotrophic factor – in the hippocampus, a curved, elongated ridge in the brain that controls learning and memory. BDNF is involved in protecting and producing neurons in the hippocampus. "When you exercise, it's been shown you release BDNF," said study co-author Justin Rhodes, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Behavioral Neuroscience at OHSU's School of Medicine and at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Portland. "BDNF helps support and strengthen synapses in the brain. We find that exercise increases these good things."

Keyword: Trophic Factors
Link ID: 4307 - Posted: 06.24.2010

STANFORD, Calif. - Researchers at Stanford University Medical Center have identified a genetic marker that can explain why some people experience side effects to common antidepressants while others do not. They also found that a key liver enzyme involved in breaking down these antidepressants surprisingly played no role in the development of side effects nor in how well the drugs worked. The findings may lead to fewer side effects for patients undergoing antidepressant drug therapy. "Antidepressants are among the most widely prescribed medications in the world," said lead author Greer Murphy Jr., MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. "One of the mysteries at this point is why some people get debilitating side effects and others don't." To start solving the mystery, Murphy and Alan Schatzberg, MD, the Kenneth T. Norris Jr. Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, wanted to find differences among patients in the function of proteins - and the genes that encode those proteins - that could account for the varied response to drug treatment. Their findings appear in the October issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Keyword: Depression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 4306 - Posted: 09.30.2003

-- Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have linked a defective protein in Huntington's disease to gridlock in the transportation system that moves signals and vital protein cargoes within the brain, eventually leading to neuron cell death. Published in the September 25, 2003 issue of the journal Neuron, their studies in Drosophila, the fruit fly, showed that a protein called huntingtin is critical for normal neuronal transportation. When the protein is defective, however, it appears to physically blocks traffic in the narrow axons that are the long pipes of the nerve cells. Although defective huntingtin genes have previously been linked to Huntington's disease, this is the first study to illustrate that the defective protein may cause neuronal damage by aggregating (sticking together) and blocking axonal traffic. Copyright © 1992-2003 Bio Online, Inc.

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 4305 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New Haven, Conn. -- Midlife postmenopausal women who received daily treatment with estrogen showed improved oral reading and verbal memory performance, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in the September issue of the journal Menopause. "This is the first study to specifically examine the effect of estrogen on reading ability," said principal investigator Sally Shaywitz, M.D., professor of pediatrics and in the Yale Child Study Center . Most of the research examining the association between estrogen use and cognitive function has focused on global, more non-specific, mental status or memory as the principal outcome. "The study also shows that estrogen may benefit younger postmenopausal women engaged in everyday activities, such as reading," Shaywitz added. "It should encourage physicians caring for postmenopausal women to inquire about and take seriously concerns about difficulties in reading and in memory."

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 4304 - Posted: 09.25.2003

Resistance exercise may directly reset the body clocks in skeletal muscle, according to research published in Genome Biology this week. This result may partly explain how exercising early in the day helps jet-lagged bodies readjust to their new time zone. Many processes in the body vary in a 24-hour rhythm called the circadian rhythm. These rhythms are controlled by molecular clocks, in organs such as the liver, in tissues such as skeletal muscle, and in the hypothalamus, a part of the brain. The clock in the hypothalamus is the central controller and keeps all the peripheral clocks in synch. Exercise can reset circadian rhythms. Most scientists thought this process was mediated purely by inputs to the hypothalamus, which can alter the expression of genes in the central clock. Now researchers, from the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, the University of California, and Northwestern University, have found that exercise can also alter the expression of clock genes in the muscles themselves.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 4303 - Posted: 09.25.2003

By JOHN O'NEIL Several years ago, Dr. Peter M. Meyer and his colleagues asked a large group of menopausal women how many of them were bothered by forgetfulness. "Every hand in the room went up," he recalled. But tests conducted over several years turned up no evidence to support the idea that menopause actually interfered with memory, according to an article released yesterday. The study, which was published in the journal Neurology, involved 803 women who had not yet reached menopause or were in early stages when the research began. Once a year, the women were tested on their ability to repeat long strings of numbers backward and to identify pairs of symbols and digits quickly. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 4302 - Posted: 09.25.2003

NewScientist.com news service Being smart is not always a good thing in the evolutionary race, suggests a new study by Swiss researchers If intelligence were always a positive attribute, it would always be selected for by natural selection. But it is not - people and animals have their dolts as well as their Einsteins. To evolutionary biologists, that diversity means that theoretically, there must be some cost to being smart. Now for the first time, researchers have shown that in fruit flies at least, it doesn't always pay to be clever. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 4301 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service Neanderthals were not driven from northern Europe by vastly superior human hunters, suggests an analysis of hunting remains. The study by Donald Grayson of the University of Washington and Francoise Delpech of the University of Bordeaux challenges a popular theory that the primitive peoples died out because they were far less skillful hunters. The pair examined the fossilised remains of butchered animals from a cave in southwest France. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 4300 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service An anti-epilepsy drug has shown promising results for treating cocaine addiction in a preliminary US trial. Gamma-vinyl-GABA (GVG), also known as vigabatrin, works in part by blocking the craving for cocaine. When combined with counselling, 40 per cent of addicts successfully gave up their habit for the duration of the sixty-day study. "This is unheard of in addiction treatment," says Stephen Dewey, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and one of the study team. "There are no medicines that are effective at blocking cocaine craving in addicts." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Epilepsy
Link ID: 4299 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Inflatable organ may aid camouflage. JOHN WHITFIELD Octopuses can get erections, US researchers have discovered. They are the first soft-bodied animal found to have erectile tissue. The inflatable organ, called the ligula, lies at the tip of a male octopus' mating arm. When it's not aroused, the two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculatus) "has an exceptionally tiny ligula that's very hard to see", says Janet Voight of the University of Chicago1. But Voight glimpsed a rather different ligula while watching a failed mating. "It was quite prominent," she recalls. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4298 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Brain scan reveals amyloid deposits in live mice. HELEN R. PILCHER A new test takes a step towards diagnosing Alzheimer's disease in living patients. In mice it reveals amyloid plaques - a telltale sign of this type of dementia1. A test would help doctors to catch the disease early on, when therapies may be more effective. Currently, Alzheimer's can be confirmed only after death - doctors use cognitive tests and brain scans to assess memory-impaired patients, with about 85% accuracy. Brain plaques appear before clinical symptoms, so something like the mouse screen could catch the disease before memory begins to falter. "We'll be able to design better drug trials," says test co-developer Brian Bacskai of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 4297 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers excited about seizure drug By Jamie Talan A medicine developed to treat epileptic seizures has shown effectiveness in helping longtime cocaine addicts refrain from drug use. Eight addicts who received the medicine daily for six weeks have been clean for more than two months, some for almost 90 days. Twelve addicts dropped out.All were volunteers in a study, published yesterday in the journal Synapse, that was conducted by scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York University School of Medicine and an addiction treatment clinic in Mexico. "This is unheard of in addiction treatment," said Stephen Dewey, a scientist at the Brookhaven lab in Upton. "There are no medicines that are effective at blocking cocaine craving in addicts." Copyright © Newsday, Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Epilepsy
Link ID: 4296 - Posted: 06.24.2010