Scientific researchers who use human subjects in their work rely on their ability to speak or write to find out what they want to know. But as this Sciencentral News video reports, researchers who learn from babies don’t have that luxury. “Anybody who has raised an infant knows that it’s very difficult to get this kind of information out of a baby," says Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the University of Washington Center for Mind, Brain and Learning and professor of speech and hearing sciences. "We can’t as parents ask them what they know, what they see, what they perceive, or what they’re learning. So you have to be very clever in the laboratory to capitalize on the things kids do naturally." In this case, Kuhl and her team are capitalizing on infants' natural tendency to turn their heads when they hear a change in sound, by using an adaptation of a procedure invented at the University of Washington originally designed to test infants for hearing loss. "In the original design…it was just silence in the background, and babies were encouraged to turn their heads when a sound was presented," explains Kuhl. "If they did so, the animal in the box would light up and dance. It was very, very effective in diagnosing children with hearing impairment." © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Language
Link ID: 4255 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service Women are better at instant counting than men, a mass mathematical experiment has revealed. Over 18,000 people took part in the research, using touch screens inserted among interactive exhibits at a science exhibition in Bristol, UK. The study confirms that the brain has two distinct ways of counting, an idea first proposed 50 years ago. "If I hold up three fingers, most people don't need to count how many there are," says lead scientist Brian Butterworth, from University of College London. But for more than a handful of objects, the time needed by people for their calculation jumps and increases as more objects are added. This suggests people use two different mechanisms to assess small and large numbers. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 4254 - Posted: 06.24.2010

-- Dirt may help scientists answer a question that has baffled them for decades: How does chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk spread from animal to animal? By turning to the land, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers show that prions - infectious proteins considered to be at the root of the disease - literally stick to some soil types, suggesting that the landscape may serve as an environmental reservoir for the disease. The findings will be discussed during a poster presentation on Wednesday, Sept. 10, in New York City at the 226th national meeting of the American Chemical Society. Copyright © 1992-2003 Bio Online, Inc

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 4253 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ATLANTA–Emory University researchers have found that paroxetine HCL (Paxil) produces measurable improvement in verbal memory and also increases the size of the hippocampus, a key area of the brain involved in learning and remembering, in persons suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Their study, which will be published in the Oct. 1 edition of Biological Psychiatry, also found that Paxil significantly reduces the three main symptom clusters of PTSD–re-experiencing the traumatic event; avoidance and emotional numbing related to experiences that recall the traumatic event; and hyperarousal at inappropriate times. The study was directed by J. Douglas Bremner, MD, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Department of Radiology at the Emory University School of Medicine, and Director of Mental Health Research at the Atlanta Veteran's Affairs Medical Center. Eric Vermetten, MD, former research fellow in the Emory Psychiatry Department and now at the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands, was first author of the study. The study, conducted over a 12-month period, was based on 23 persons who suffered with PTSD from a variety of causes, most commonly childhood abuse.

Keyword: Stress; Depression
Link ID: 4252 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New nerve cells put fall foraging on fast track The "senior moments" that herald old age, and the ability to forget where we put something we held in our hands just moments ago, give us humans much cause to envy a species like the black-capped chickadee. Especially when fall is right around the corner. Every autumn, the chickadee roams a territory covering tens of square miles, gathering seeds and storing them in hundreds of hiding places in trees and on the ground. Over the harsh winter that follows, the tireless songbird, which weighs about 12 grams and fits inside the typical human hand, faithfully re-visits its caches to feed.

Keyword: Neurogenesis; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 4251 - Posted: 09.12.2003

Reviewed by Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer It's been said that anybody who claims to understand consciousness clearly doesn't. Undaunted, neuroscientists have been offering at least partial solutions to the consciousness "problem," building machines that can learn and maybe even "think," analyzing what's different about brain-damaged patients, designing clever brain-imaging experiments that explain at least a little something about the "neural correlates of consciousness" without ever resorting to introspection. Introspection, after all, is what philosophers do. They may do it in formal ways, with impressively technical results, but lately the experimentalists seem to be taking the lead, tackling the age-old questions of mind and self-awareness with remarkable gusto. ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Laterality
Link ID: 4250 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The National Academies’ National Research Council released a much-anticipated report on Tuesday, September 9, 2003, on combating underage drinking. One recommendation, reducing young peoples' exposure to alcohol advertising. As this ScienCentral News video reports, neuroscientists have studied alcohol ads' appeal to underage drinkers. Underage drinking is a serious problem in the United States, costing Americans $53 billion each year. A report released by the National Academies’ National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine says, “More young people drink alcohol than use other drugs or smoke tobacco”. The report calls for better policing of alcohol ads because “a substantial portion of alcohol advertising reaches an underage audience or is presented in a style that is attractive to youth”. © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4249 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A device akin to an inflatable sleeping bag could make the difference between life and death after a heart attack. Called a "shock sheet", it works by squeezing blood out of the legs, which boosts blood flow to the heart and brain. If the heart stops beating - a cardiac arrest - brain damage can start after just a few minutes. When medics reach the patient they use defibrillators to shock the heart into restarting. If that fails, they try cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), which involves manually pumping the patient's heart and inflating the lungs. But CPR delivers only 10 to 15 per cent of normal blood flow to the brain. The "shock sheet" is designed to be wrapped round a patient and inflated to raise upper body blood pressure within 30 seconds. And it can be put in place while normal CPR is being carried out. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 4248 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GARDINER HARRIS A federal drug advisory panel yesterday rejected pleas from members of Congress and drug enforcement officials that sales of the widely abused painkiller OxyContin be severely restricted. But officials from the Bush administration told the panel they were seriously considering even broader rules requiring doctors to get special training before being allowed to prescribe OxyContin or any other controlled narcotic. The changes are intended to stem a growing tide of prescription drug abuse. OxyContin is responsible for 500 to 1,000 deaths a year, a panel member estimated yesterday. Some two million people used narcotics recreationally in 2001, the last year for which figures were available, up from 1.5 million in 1998 and 400,000 in the mid-1980's, according to data presented to the panel. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 4247 - Posted: 09.11.2003

Picky paternal protection questions evolution of promiscuity. JOANNE BAKER Baboon fathers rush to protect their kids in fights, a DNA study has revealed1. Somehow the males spot their sons even in spats between the offspring of mothers both of which they have mated. The finding means that researchers must re-examine why multiple mating occurs in primates, and the reasons for paternal care when it does. In bird societies, where promiscuity is the norm, having several supportive dads was thought to secure more protection for juveniles overall. "It reopens the question of how natural selection favours recognition mechanisms," says Paul Sherman of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who studies the social behaviour of animals. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 4246 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston and Jefferson Medical College have found that the body’s natural biological clock is more sensitive to shorter wavelength blue light than it is to the longer wavelength green light, which is needed to see. The discovery proves what scientists have suspected over the last decade: a second, non-visual photoreceptor system drives the body’s internal clock, which sets sleep patterns and other physiological and behavioral functions. “This discovery will have an immediate impact on the therapeutic use of light for treating winter depression and circadian disorders,” says George Brainard, Ph.D., professor of neurology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. “Some makers of light therapy equipment are developing prototypes with enhanced blue light stimuli.” ©2003 Thomas Jefferson University Hospital

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 4245 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DURHAM, N.C. -- For the first time in any animal, Duke University Medical Center researchers have linked a single pheromone receptor in the fruit fly to a specific sexual behavior. Pheromones are chemical signals exuded by many animals -- including humans -- that serve as stimuli to evoke behavioral responses in other individuals of the same species. Pheromones often attract members of the opposite sex and provide important cues during courtship and mating. Yet little is known about pheromone receptors, which are the protein switches nestled in cell membranes that trigger responses to pheromones, said Duke Medical Center geneticist Hubert Amrein, Ph.D., senior author of the study. © 2001-2003 Duke University Medical Center.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4244 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NSF-funded study suggests paternal care may be ancient trait in primates In a finding that surprised researchers, a recent three-year study of five baboon groups at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya reveals that baboon fathers overwhelming side with their offspring when intervening in disputes. The study, which appears in the Sept. 11 issue of the journal Nature , was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Chicago Zoological Society, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation and the National Geographic Society. Not that baboons have a bad-dad reputation, but their links to females and immature baboons is rather loose by primate standards. For example, females and males have multiple mating partners, and they do not form permanent bonds with each other.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4243 - Posted: 09.11.2003

UCSF researchers have identified a biochemical feedback system in rats that could explain why some people crave comfort foods - such as chocolate chip cookies and greasy cheeseburgers - when they are chronically stressed, and why such people are apt to gain weight in the abdomen. The finding, to be published this week on-line in the Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on a glucocorticoid steroid hormone (corticosterone in rats, cortisol in humans) that plays a key role in the stress-response system. In their study, the researchers determined that 24 hours after activation of the chronic stress system - which stimulates a flood of hormonal signaling from the hypothalamus to the adrenal glands – glucocorticoids prompt rats to engage in pleasure-seeking behaviors, which include eating high-energy foods (sucrose and lard). The animals develop abdominal obesity, and the negative aspects of the chronic stress response system, otherwise ushered in by the glucocorticoids, are blunted. The researchers suspect that the metabolic signal to inhibit the stress system comes directly from fat depots. The finding offers an explanation into how chronic stress can be inhibited, or curbed. While the body's acute response to stress - say to being cut off in traffic by a speeding car - diminishes through a naturally occurring inhibitory feedback mechanism of the adrenal stress system, its chronic response to stress - in which a barrage of threats, scares or frustrations occur over days, weeks or months -- becomes chronically excited. Over time, the elevated stress level can initiate a host of deleterious effects on the body - a loss or gain of weight, depression, obesity (associated with type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease and stroke), and a loss of brain tissue.

Keyword: Stress; Obesity
Link ID: 4242 - Posted: 06.24.2010

People suffering from Asperger's syndrome are not getting the help they need because doctors are not accepting the diagnosis, it was claimed today. Asperger's - a condition similar to autism - was only recognised relatively recently by experts. Conservative MP Angela Browning says that too many psychiatrists do not have the right training to recognise it. MPs have the chance to use a debate in the House of Commons on Wednesday to discuss the issue. Patients with Asperger's have a normal IQ, but often have particular obsessions or preoccupations which lead to unusual behaviour. They can have trouble with social skills, perhaps in interpreting body language - although occasionally the syndrome manifests as a remarkable talent in a particular creative area. Asperger's patients can also have heightened sensations of touch, taste or smell which may disturb them. (C) BBC

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 4241 - Posted: 09.10.2003

By Kristine Krug, in Salford When and how did the human mind evolve? These are two of the big questions researchers from the UK universities of Liverpool and Southampton will tackle from October. They will undertake a project called Lucy To Language: The Archaeology Of The Social Brain. It is being funding to the tune of one million pounds by the British Academy, the largest single research grant the organisation has ever handed out. The project will bring together archaeologists, evolutionary psychologists, social anthropologists, sociologists and linguists. They will attempt to reconstruct the social lives of our ancestors - to work out precisely how they behaved using archaeological evidence of their bones and tools and making comparisons with modern humans and other primates. New models developed for understanding primate behaviour can now be applied to the hard evidence of our ancestors. This should help us better understand how our brains have developed since the famous early hominid called Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), who lived in Africa about four million years ago. (C) BBC

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 4240 - Posted: 09.10.2003

A vote to permit stem-cell research is a vote to alleviate suffering, says former MP REGINALD STACKHOUSE By REGINALD STACKHOUSE Let's call him Jack. Let's also admit he's serving a life sentence. Jack will spend the rest of his life behind locked doors. But not for murder. Not for child abuse. Nor any other crime. Alzheimer's disease has taken over Jack's brain and he can't be trusted to live outside a security-controlled care centre. It's a pathetic fate for an academic whose life had been dedicated to the mind. Pathetic to be cut off from family and friends. Pathetic never to know his first grandchild. Pathetic most of all because this could be prevented. © 2003 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc.

Keyword: Stem Cells; Parkinsons
Link ID: 4239 - Posted: 06.24.2010

MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) -- Mysteriously snuffed out candles, weird sensations and shivers down the spine may not be due to the presence of ghosts in haunted houses but to very low frequency sound that is inaudible to humans. British scientists have shown in a controlled experiment that the extreme bass sound known as infrasound produces a range of bizarre effects in people including anxiety, extreme sorrow and chills -- supporting popular suggestions of a link between infrasound and strange sensations. "Normally you can't hear it," Dr Richard Lord, an acoustic scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in England who worked on the project, said on Monday. © 2003 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 4238 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Learning disabilities result from general problems in the brain rather than specific genetic or neurological defects, the British Association Festival of Science in Salford was told on Tuesday. A large but unidentified group of genes, each with very small effects on overall brain function, work together to determine most of mental ability, says Robert Plomin, at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. If Plomin's theory proves correct, common learning disabilities such as dyslexia will need a dramatic redefinition. Dyslexia is commonly defined as a reading problem in someone who has otherwise normal intelligence. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Intelligence
Link ID: 4237 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A small group of genes on the X chromosome regulate the brain's "threat-detector" and might explain the high prevalence of autism among males, researchers have discovered. Some people lacking these genes have problems recognising fear in another person's face, a common trait in autism. They also have abnormal amygdalas - a brain area known as the "fear centre". The results provide a possible genetic mechanism for the sex bias of autism. Other recent research has identified a gene in the same region of the X chromosome that correlates with the severity of autism. However, confirmation of this explanation of autism's sex bias is still far off - researchers have not yet determined which specific gene or genes are responsible and have not looked at the function of these genes in autistic people. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 4236 - Posted: 06.24.2010