MADISON - Staying healthy may involve more than washing hands or keeping a positive attitude. According to a new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it also may involve a particular pattern of brain activity. By monitoring activity levels in the human brain's prefrontal cortex, the researchers demonstrate for the first time that people who have more activity in the left side of this area also have a stronger immune response against disease. The findings, soon to be published in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pinpoint one of the mechanisms underlying the link between mental and physical well-being. Numerous scientific studies show that keeping a positive attitude can keep a person healthy, says Richard Davidson, a UW-Madison neuroscientist and senior author of the paper. But he adds that the reasons why this connection exists are poorly understood.

Keyword: Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 4195 - Posted: 09.02.2003

He found himself sobbing uncontrollably, unable to work a sandwich dispenser and consumed by guilt. Clinical psychologist Richard Bentall had taken a psychiatric drug as part of an experiment. Add in personal tragedy and a spell of depression, and he could never see mental illness the same way again. Now he thinks diagnostic labels have no more predictive power than star signs and that plenty of people can live happily with severe psychotic symptoms. And as he told Liz Else, the people doing the suffering should have power restored to them Saying psychiatry is no better than astrology is a bit strong, isn't it? No. I've tried to show in my book that there is truckloads of research that shows that these categories are meaningless. They are remarkably similar to star signs because people think that star signs say something about them and about what will happen in the future. They think the same with psychiatric diagnoses, which don't predict the course of the illness, which treatments will work, or say anything about aetiology. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 4194 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By VIRGINIA POSTREL The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new use for biosynthesized human growth hormone: treating unusually short children who don't have any other known disorder. In clinical studies, the drug, which is called Humatrope and made by Eli Lilly & Company, added several inches to kids' eventual height without producing any significant health risks. Humatrope, in other words, met the regulatory tests for safety and efficacy. But bioethicists greeted the decision with protests. ''We will start to treat the normal as a disease,'' Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania told The Washington Post , adding that ''whenever you take people on the low end of a distribution curve and say they have a disorder, you're starting down a slippery slope.'' It does seem ridiculous to treat otherwise healthy short people as disabled. A man who is 5-foot-3 or a woman who is 4-foot-11 is hardly in the same position as someone who can't walk or see. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 4193 - Posted: 09.02.2003

Boys with eating disorders may often be misdiagnosed by doctors, say experts surveyed by the BBC. Disorders such as anorexia are much more common in girls - only one in ten diagnosed cases are in boys. Almost half of all child mental health experts asked by the BBC said they felt that more boys were coming forward with the problem. However, they said that GPs and parents were missing vital clues that boys had developed an eating disorder. The BBC asked 53 child and adolescent mental health services and children's wards across the UK about the issue. Some said that they had seen boys as young as eight or nine with the condition. Almost three quarters of those surveyed said that there was probably under-diagnosis of eating disorders in males. (C) BBC

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 4192 - Posted: 08.30.2003

It is an illusion that has bedazzled people since Aristotle described it 2000 years ago. If you look at a waterfall for a short time, then look at the bank beside it, the bank will appear to drift upwards. Now an experiment that monitors brain activity has explained how the "waterfall effect" arises. It confirms a hypothesis proposed in the 19th century by the German psychologist Sigmund Exner. He said the waterfall illusion was caused by neurons tuned to opposite directions of motion. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 4191 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Artificial intelligence meets good old-fashioned human thought Bruce Bower When Kenneth M. Ford considers the future of artificial intelligence, he doesn't envision legions of cunning robots running the world. Nor does he have high hopes for other much-touted AI prospects—among them, machines with the mental moxie to ponder their own existence and tiny computer-linked devices implanted in people's bodies. When Ford thinks of the future of artificial intelligence, two words come to his mind: cognitive prostheses. It's not a term that trips off the tongue. However, the concept behind the words inspires the work of the more than 50 scientists affiliated with the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) that Ford directs at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. In short, a cognitive prosthesis is a computational tool that amplifies or extends a person's thought and perception, much as eyeglasses are prostheses that improve vision. The difference, says Ford, is that a cognitive prosthesis magnifies strengths in human intellect rather than corrects presumed deficiencies in it. Cognitive prostheses, therefore, are more like binoculars than eyeglasses. Current IHMC projects include an airplane-cockpit display that shows critical information in a visually intuitive format rather than on standard gauges; software that enables people to construct maps of what's known about various topics, for use in teaching, business, and Web site design; and a computer system that identifies people's daily behavior patterns as they go about their jobs and simulates ways to organize those practices more effectively. Copyright ©2003 Science Service

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 4190 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower For the first time, scientists have identified a gene that appears to influence the development of at least some cases of dyslexia. This learning disorder is characterized by difficulties in perceiving sounds within words, spelling and reading problems, and troubles with written and oral expression. It's estimated that dyslexia affects at least 1 in 25 people. Although scientists are investigating dyslexia's suspected neural roots (SN: 5/24/03, p. 324: http://www.sciencenews.org/20030524/fob4.asp), the condition's causes remain unknown. If confirmed in further studies, the new genetic finding represents a major step forward for dyslexia researchers. Until now, investigators have only been able to link dyslexia to alterations along stretches of DNA containing tens or hundreds of genes. The most prominent of these genetic segments are located on chromosomes 6 and 15. Copyright ©2003 Science Service.

Keyword: Dyslexia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 4189 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It's bad enough to know you could pass on a genetic form of mental retardation to your children. But carriers of a Fragile X syndrome "premutation" have something else to worry about: They're at higher risk of neuromuscular degeneration. Now a new study explains why. People with Fragile X syndrome--the most common inherited type of mental retardation--lack a protein called FMR1 because the gene for FMR1 is laden with extra DNA. The letters CGG repeat themselves more than 200 times, compared to fewer than 60 repeats in normal people. Premutation carriers have intermediate numbers of repeats. Clinicians have recently discovered that some of these people develop muscle tremors that worsen with age, similar to individuals with neuromuscular disorders. But doctors don't understand why. Stephen Warren of Emory University in Atlanta and colleagues suspected that the neurodegeneration is caused by messenger RNA (mRNA) that serves as the template for the protein. They noted that muscle nerves don't degenerate in Fragile X patients, whose FMR1 gene is so long that mRNA is never even made. Carriers, however, make mRNA for FMR1 that carries between 60 and 200 repeats of CGG, but don't make the protein. To determine whether the premutation carriers' mRNA wreaks havoc on neurons, Warren's team turned to the fruit fly retina, which many researchers use to model degenerating nerves. Copyright © 2003 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4188 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Women who take the drug Ecstasy in their first trimester of pregnancy may be putting their unborn child at risk for brain damage, according to a study published in the September issue of the journal Neurotoxicity and Teratology. Jack W. Lipton, PhD, a neuroscientist at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, demonstrated that fetal exposure in rats to the drug Ecstasy during a period analogous to the first trimester in humans causes changes in the young rat's brain chemistry and behavior. The study was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Ecstasy also is known as MDMA or 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine. "The limited data that exist suggest that women who use Ecstasy stop taking it when they learn they are pregnant," says Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the NIDA. "But many of the animal studies that linked this drug to neurological changes and learning impairments were conducted in situations analogous to the third trimester in humans. Thus, this study sought to investigate a more true-to-life situation by looking at neurobiological changes caused by Ecstasy early in pregnancy."

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4187 - Posted: 08.30.2003

SULTAN, Wash. - Days after 10,000 mink were released from a farm in southern Snohomish County, hundreds of the animals not yet captured have converged on local farms in search of food. The animals had killed at least 25 exotic birds and attacked other livestock in the area. "Over half our livestock was shredded. Murdered. Eaten alive," said Jeff Weaver, who discovered the dead birds on his farm Thursday. "These are not like regular farm animals. They're our pets." Copyright © 2003 The Associated Press. All rights Copyright © 2003 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 4186 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ST. PAUL, MN – The majority of epilepsy patients who are seizure-free for the first year after surgery will have a favorable long-term outcome, according to a study in the August 26 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study examined 175 patients with intractable epilepsy (when the condition is not relieved by medication) who had surgery that removed a small portion of the brain identified as a region involved in seizure generation, and who were seizure-free for the first year following surgery. Researchers followed up with the patients for an average of more than eight years, and found that 63 percent never relapsed (stayed seizure-free). “Little is known about seizure recurrence in patients five, 10, or 20 years after surgery, and one year isn’t enough to follow up a patient who had surgery,” said study author and neurologist Susan S. Spencer, MD, of the Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn. “The number of patients who didn’t relapse in this study was larger than we thought it would be.”

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 4185 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MEREDITH F. SMALL Humans and apes separated about six million years ago, and ever since then humans have been careering down an evolutionary path all their own. Lucky for us, bits of bones dropped along the way became fossilized, and these remains tell much about the physical evolution of the creatures that eventually became modern humans. Harder to follow is the path of our behavior. No one really knows what early humans acted like, who they interacted with or what kind of social groups they preferred, and so the lifestyle of our ancient ancestors is only a guess. This part of our history is so up for grabs that there is lots of room for speculation by polymaths curious enough to read the mountain of anthropological literature and piece together a credible story of human behavioral evolution. And why not? Anthropology has a long tradition of letting others look at the data. Authors like Robert Ardrey, Elaine Morgan, Carl Sagan and Jared Diamond, among many others, have all attempted to figure out where we came from and how we did it. Because no one could possibly be right — we have no film from the Pleistocene and no written records of our ancient past to confirm or refute anything anyone says — each account has merit and is worthy of discussion. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4184 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Science reveals a way to rise above our natures By Michael Shermer "Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above." --Katharine Hepburn to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, 1951 Evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond of the University of California at Los Angeles once classified humans as the "third chimpanzee" (the second being the bonobo). Genetically, we are very similar, and when it comes to high levels of aggression between members of two different groups, as I noted in last month's column on "The Ignoble Savage," we also resemble chimpanzees. Although humans have a brutal history, there's hope that the pessimists who forecast our eventual demise are wrong: recent evidence indicates that, like bonobos, we may be evolving in a more peaceful direction. One of the most striking features in artificially selecting for docility among wild animals is that, along with far less aggression, you also get a suite of other changes, including a reduction in skull, jaw and tooth size. In genetics, this is called pleiotropy. Selecting for one trait may generate additional, unintended changes. The most famous study on selective breeding for passivity began in 1959 by Russian geneticist Dmitri Belyaev of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Siberia. It continues today under the direction of Lyudmila N. Trut. Silver foxes were bred for friendliness toward humans, defined by a graduating series of criteria, from the animal allowing itself to be approached, to being hand fed, to being petted, to proactively seeking human contact. In only 35 generations the researchers produced tail-wagging, hand-licking, peaceful foxes. What they also created were foxes with smaller skulls, jaws and teeth than their wild ancestors. © 1996-2003 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Evolution; Aggression
Link ID: 4183 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor A new kind of drug abuse is sweeping university campuses in North America and is expected to come to Britain. Faced with the pressure of exams and essay deadlines, students are abandoning the traditional stimulants of coffee and cigarettes for Ritalin. Unlike their parents who "blew their minds" on recreational drugs in the Sixties and Seventies, today's American students are using chemical substances in the pursuit of peak performance. Ritalin is a stimulant drug, best known as a treatment for hyperactive children. It has found a ready black market among students who are desperate to succeed. Users say it helps them to focus and to concentrate. © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

Keyword: ADHD; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4182 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANNE McILROY, SCIENCE REPORTER Here is one more reason to dread getting older. Canadian researchers have found that as we age, we have more trouble getting jokes. Older people still easily get simple humour but have more difficulty than younger people with complex jokes, said Prathiba Shammi, a psychologist at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care in Toronto. Dr. Shammi's test envolved performing three humour tests on two groups of volunteers, people in their late 20s and people in their early 70s. © 2003 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 4181 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service The youngest children in a school year group have a higher risk of developing mental health problems than the oldest children, according to a new study. A survey of more than 10,000 British schoolchildren aged five to 15 years old, found that those with birthdays in the last three months of the school year were more prone to psychiatric problems, such as hyperactivity and behavioural difficulties, compared to those born in the earlier in the school year. "Our study shows that those born in the first third of the school year have an 8.3 per cent chance of having a psychiatric disorder, whereas the youngest third have a 9.9 per cent chance," says psychologist Robert Goodman, who led the research team at King's College London. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: ADHD; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 4180 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MILT FREUDENHEIM Doctors and hospitals across the country are scrambling to satisfy the booming demand for surgery that shrinks the stomachs of severely obese people. Dozens of hospitals are adding special operating suites for the procedure, called bariatric surgery, which attracted wide notice after public figures like Al Roker of "Today" on NBC, Sharon Osbourne of "The Osbournes" on MTV and Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, had it done. Some bariatric surgeons are fully scheduled 12 months in advance, and hundreds of doctors have jumped into the field recently and started to advertise their availability. Bariatric procedures — meant for obese people who are at extremely high risk of severe health problems, as defined by a National Institutes of Health consensus — surged more than 40 percent last year, to 80,000. This year, the number is expected to climb to 120,000, according to Frost & Sullivan, a consulting firm. Spending on bariatrics is approaching $3 billion a year, at an average cost of $25,000 for each procedure. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 4179 - Posted: 06.24.2010

– Our cells are constantly making life and death decisions. A new gene that controls this life or death switch and protects cells from dying has been discovered by researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as reported in the August 28 edition of the scientific journal Nature. The discovery may provide scientists with new means for identifying drugs that combat degenerative diseases such as Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS), the destructive effects of stroke and heart diseases, autoimmune diseases, and cancer. Chilling though it sounds, our cells are poised on the brink of death. Yet the ongoing death of some of our cells is actually essential for us to live. "Death, that is to say cell death, is a key player in biology and medicine," said Joel Rothman, professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and leader of the UCSB research team. "Cells often commit suicide so that others may live. This is the ultimate example of altruism at the cellular level." Copyright © 2003 Board of Regents of the University of California

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Apoptosis
Link ID: 4178 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New data potentially helpful to study of addiction and aging’s effects on the brain Scientists have directly demonstrated in rats that one area of the brain can support the creation of memories by changing nerve cell firing patterns in another part of the brain, aiding the animal's efforts to predict the outcome of an action based on past experience and act on that prediction. The process, one scientist says, is something like what happens when a comic strip character sees something and is immediately reminded of something else. "I like to think of it like a cartoon character with a thought bubble over his head," explained Geoffrey Schoenbaum, an associate psychological and brain sciences research scientist in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins. "There's a neural representation of something in the mind that is invoked by the environment, but not yet present in the environment."

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 4177 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A brief non-judgmental interview and feedback session designed to enhance people's motivation to change their behavior added to a self-help program appears to be effective in treating some people with two common types of eating disorders –bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. The finding comes from an as yet unpublished University of Washington doctoral dissertation and also suggests that the session, which uses a technique called motivational interviewing, may be a cost effective way of providing assistance to a population that is particularly resistant to treatment. People with eating disorders are extremely difficult to treat and are "often ambivalent about seeking treatment," said UW psychology doctoral student Erin Dunn. "Most people with eating disorders don't seek treatment on their own. They are indecisive about change and generally seek help when prompted through family, friends or a physician."

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 4176 - Posted: 06.24.2010