The ability of worms to convert potentially harmful fats into helpful ones might be harnessed to cut heart disease and strokes. Nematode worms, despite their tiny size, appear to be better at coping with Omega-6 fatty acids - a fat which contributes to blocked arteries in humans. The worms naturally convert Omega-6 to Omega-3 fatty acids, which decrease inflammation in blood vessels, and help prevent the formation of blockages. Scientists in the US have found that a particular chemical made by the worm appears to have a beneficial effect on human cells in a test tube. When human arteries harden and clog up - a process called atherosclerosis - it can stop enough blood, and oxygen, reaching the muscles of the heart. This can cause angina, or full-blown heart attacks. (C) BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 3179 - Posted: 12.16.2002

Forget the robot child in the movie "AI." Vanderbilt researchers Nilanjan Sarkar and Craig Smith have a less romantic but more practical idea in mind. "We are not trying to give a robot emotions. We are trying to make robots that are sensitive to our emotions," says Smith, associate professor of psychology and human development. Their vision, which is to create a kind of robot Friday, a personal assistant who can accurately sense the moods of its human bosses and respond appropriately, is described in the article, "Online Stress Detection using Psychophysiological Signals for Implicit Human-Robot Cooperation." The article, which appears in the Dec. issue of the journal Robotica, also reports the initial steps that they have taken to make their vision a reality.

Keyword: Emotions; Robotics
Link ID: 3178 - Posted: 12.16.2002

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Infants born with the cell protein called Rhesus (Rh) factor that their mothers are missing, have twice the risk for developing schizophrenia. This new study, conducted by researchers at UCLA, suggest that the gene that codes for the Rh factor is the cause for the increased risk. Christina Palmer, M.D., a research scientist at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, says, "Previous studies reported a link between mothers and infants who are Rh-incompatible and a higher rate of schizophrenia in the children later in life. Our research is the first to take a genetic approach to examining this increased risk." Rh factor is a protein found on the exterior of red blood cells, and Rhesus D factor (RHD) is the gene that codes for the Rh protein. An individual is considered to be Rh-positive when the Rh factor exists or Rh-negative when Rh factor is not present on red blood cells. It is believed when a pregnant woman is Rh-negative and her unborn child is Rh-positive, the mother's immune system will attack the unborn child's red blood cells. This can cause oxygen deprivation to the unborn child's brain, which can cause jaundice or even severe brain damage and eventually lead to schizophrenia. Copyright © 2002 Ivanhoe Broadcast News, Inc.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 3177 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service Superior memories are made not born, according to a study that tested 10 memory champions against 10 matched controls. The team at University College London found that the master memorisers have neither higher IQs nor special brain structures to explain their talent. Instead, when debriefed after the memory tests, many admitted they always use an ancient Greek mnemonic technique known as "method of loci". This involves visualising yourself walking along a well-known route, depositing images of to-be-remembered items at specific points, then retracing your steps during recall. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 3176 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Study is the first test of the adaptive value of the dance language Based on work done in 2001 in the Agricultural Experiment Station at UC Riverside, P. Kirk Visscher, professor of entomology, and Gavin Sherman, former graduate student in the department of entomology, report their findings in a paper entitled "Honeybee colonies achieve fitness through dancing" in the journal Nature. The honey bee "dance language," first described in the 1940s, reflects the distance and direction to the food source visited by the forager. A bee returning from a rich source of food will "dance" on the vertical comb surface by running in a circle. On each revolution, the bee will bisect the circle at an angle. The angle with respect to 12 o'clock represents the angle to fly with respect to the sun. If the bee ran from 6 to 12 o'clock (i.e., straight up), this would communicate to the other bees to fly directly towards the sun. As the bee dances, it also waggles its abdomen whilst crossing the circle. The number of waggles tells the other bees how far away from the beehive the nectar is. The more the waggles, the greater the distance to the nectar. "The dance language is the most complex example of symbolic communication in any animal other than primates," said Visscher. "Our study is the first test of the adaptive value of the dance language. It provides insights that may be of use in manipulating foraging behavior of honeybees for pollination of crops." Copyright 2002, Regents UC.

Keyword: Animal Communication
Link ID: 3175 - Posted: 12.16.2002

By Becky Ham, Staff Writer Health Behavior News Service A year's worth of counseling and medication relieved some symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder among a group children, but only children receiving additional biofeedback therapy managed to hold on to these healthy gains after going off the medication, according to a new study. Half of the 100 children in the study received EEG biofeedback therapy, a treatment in which individuals are taught to retrain electrical activity in their brains. The biofeedback group also experienced significant changes in these "brain wave" patterns associated with attention-deficit disorder, according to Vincent J. Monastra, Ph.D., of the FPI Attention Disorders Clinic and colleagues. "While ADHD is diagnosed on the basis of behavioral symptoms, our findings suggest that the disorder also involves neurophysiological factors," says Monastra and colleagues. The study results are published in the December issue of Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback.

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 3174 - Posted: 12.16.2002

By NICHOLAS WADE The long search for a gene that helps cause schizophrenia may at last be bearing fruit after many false starts and disappointments, scientists are reporting. An errant gene first implicated among schizophrenic patients in Iceland has now turned up in a survey of Scottish patients, too, giving a clear confirmation of the earlier result. The gene may be involved in remodeling the connections that brain cells make with one another, called synapses. Many of the Icelandic and Scottish patients have the same variant pattern in the gene, supporting the idea that when the gene does not work as designed, wrongly formed nerve-to-nerve wiring accumulates in the brain, giving rise to schizophrenia. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 3173 - Posted: 12.13.2002

Research may lead to relief of sleep disorders and jet lag A group of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) has demonstrated that the gene Opn4, which codes for the protein Melanopsin, is the elusive pigment gene that captures light and keeps your body tuned to a daily cycle--called a circadian rhythm. "This is the key protein in the eye that sends signals to the clock," says TSRI Cell Biology Professor Steve Kay, Ph.D., who led the study. In an article appearing in the journal Science, Kay and his colleagues describe experiments in which they observe laboratory models that lack the Opn4 gene. They were able to show that without this gene, the models were not able to keep their circadian rhythms entrained to a 24-hour day. If a circadian rhythm were a grandfather clock, Opn4 (Melanopsin) would be the key that winds it every day. Previously, it was not known which genes were responsible.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 3172 - Posted: 12.13.2002

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL--Animals can be a pretty uncooperative lot. While species like lions and prairie dogs cooperate in some cases, scientists seldom know the costs and benefits of cooperative acts in the wild. In particular, scientists have long been interested in situations in which cooperating animals give up something now in order to develop a relationship that pays off in the long run. Experimental studies show, however, that animals don't usually cooperate in these cases; apparently, they are unwilling to pass up an immediate benefit in order to gain more in the long run. Now, experiments with blue jays at the University of Minnesota suggest that animals may be induced to cooperate when their opponent reciprocates by tit-for-tat behavior and rewards accumulate over a sequence of plays. The work, which will be published in the Dec. 13 issue of Science, suggests that these are among the factors guiding evolution of some animals--including humans--toward cooperative behavior. "Our results suggest that the timing of the benefits of cooperation is really important," said lead investigator David Stephens, an associate professor of ecology, evolution and behavior in the College of Biological Sciences. "For example, suppose you want two toddlers to work together, and you reward good behavior at every turn. They're likely to soon fall back into bad behavior. But if they have to play nicely with each other for 10 trials before receiving a reward, then they are likely to do it."

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 3171 - Posted: 12.13.2002

Neurosurgeons at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center have become the first in the Chicago area to use a radically new, magnetically controlled system to enter the brain and its vascular system to treat a variety of diseases without surgically opening up the skull and brain. "Magnet-guided neurosurgery allows us to use a guidewire and catheter to manipulate surgical tools within the brain in ways that previously were impossible," said Dr. Leonard Cerullo, chairman of the department of Neurosurgery at Rush and founder, president and medical director of the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch (CINN) medical group. "Because we can enter the brain through a blood vessel that is accessed through a small incision in the upper thigh, we have the potential to substantially reduce the need to surgically open the skull and disrupt brain tissue in order to repair aneurysms and deliver stroke therapies. We hope this will result in more effective treatment, reduced costs and swifter recovery times," he noted.

Keyword: Miscellaneous; Brain imaging
Link ID: 3170 - Posted: 12.13.2002

Researchers map brain areas that process tunes HANOVER, N.H. – Researchers at Dartmouth are getting closer to understanding how some melodies have a tendency to stick in your head or why hearing a particular song can bring back a high school dance. They have found and mapped the area in your brain that processes and tracks music. It's a place that's also active during reasoning and memory retrieval. The study by Petr Janata, Research Assistant Professor at Dartmouth's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and his colleagues is reported in the Dec. 13, 2002, issue of Science. Their results indicate that knowledge about the harmonic relationships of music is maintained in the rostromedial prefrontal cortex, which is centrally located, right behind your forehead. This region is connected to, but different from, the temporal lobe, which is involved in more basic sound processing. "This region in the front of the brain where we mapped musical activity," says Janata, "is important for a number of functions, like assimilating information that is important to one's self, or mediating interactions between emotional and non-emotional information. Our results provide a stronger foundation for explaining the link between music, emotion and the brain."

Keyword: Hearing; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 3169 - Posted: 06.24.2010

— Researchers have discovered the first genetic component of a biochemical pathway in the brain that governs the indelible imprinting of fear-related experiences in memory. The gene identified by researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Columbia University encodes a protein that inhibits the action of the fear-learning circuitry in the brain. Understanding how this protein quells fear may lead to the design of new drugs to treat depression, panic and generalized anxiety disorders. The findings were reported in the December 13, 2002 issue of the journal Cell, by a research team that included Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigators Eric Kandel at Columbia University and Catherine Dulac at Harvard University. Lead author of the paper was Gleb Shumyatsky, a postdoctoral fellow in Kandel’s laboratory at Columbia University. Other members of the research team are at the National Institutes of Health and Harvard Medical School. ©2002 Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Keyword: Emotions; Stress
Link ID: 3168 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A tiny sea creature could hold the key for better cameras. Researchers in the US are studying a relative of the starfish, known as a brittlestar, whose arms are covered with perfect lenses. The lenses provide the brittlestar with all-round vision. Scientists say they are better than any optical devices developed in the lab. "Instead of trying to come up with new ideas and technology, we can learn from this marine creature," said Joanna Aizenberg of Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs. The remarkable vision of the brittlestar is due to thousands of chalk-like calcite crystals in its skeleton. These serve as armour as well as acting together as an all-seeing eye which allows the brittlestar to spot and escape predators. (C) BBC

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 3167 - Posted: 12.12.2002

— Butterflies are able to fly with such great agility because they can draw on a variety of different wing strokes, according to a study that may help the quest for nimble, hand-sized drones, the next thing in robot warfare. Flying insects have long fascinated aircraft designers with their ability to hover apparently tirelessly, switch direction instantly or immediately throw themselves into reverse flight. But it is frustratingly hard to see how the creatures do these tricks, for they are so small and their wings beat very rapidly. Most attempts at finding out entail super-gluing a bug to a pivoting stick and filming it as it whizzes around. This may be fun for fly sadists, but it is hardly a replica of the natural conditions for flight. Copyright 2002 AFP. Copyright © 2002 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Animal Migration; Robotics
Link ID: 3166 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NICHOLAS WADE A new stem cell institute being set up at Stanford University will study a wide variety of human diseases through two advanced but controversial techniques of cell manipulation. One is nuclear transfer, also used in cloning animals, and the other will involve generating new lines of human embryonic stem cells. The institute will be headed by Dr. Irving Weissman, a Stanford expert on the stem cells in the bone marrow that daily renew the red and white blood cells. An anonymous donor has provided $12 million to start the institute. Dr. Weissman said he intended to explore two promising new lines of inquiry made possible by embryonic stem cells. The first is to find out if stem cells and cancer cells may use the same genetic machinery to replicate themselves. Stem cells multiply freely to generate all the mature cells of the body, and though mature cells lose this ability cancer cells somehow regain it. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stem Cells; Regeneration
Link ID: 3165 - Posted: 12.12.2002

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center report that hemispherectomy – a procedure in which half the brain is removed -– may reduce or eliminate severe seizures even in older children with a rare congenital disorder associated with epilepsy. The findings are published in the December issue of Neurology. Contrary to results of previous studies, the Hopkins research found that in children with Sturge-Weber syndrome, delaying hemispherectomy even for years had no apparent effect on seizure control or learning ability. Some 80 percent of Sturge-Weber patients develop epilepsy. "In fact, older patients were statistically more likely to be seizure-free after surgery," said the study's lead author, Eric Kossoff, M.D., a pediatric neurologist at the Children's Center. "However, in general, the child's age at surgery did not have an adverse effect on either their intellectual abilities or seizure reduction."

Keyword: Epilepsy; Laterality
Link ID: 3164 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scans suggests intellectual games miss 'g' spot. HELEN PEARSON The board games chess and GO take practice, not intellect, brain scans of players suggest1,2 . Intelligence areas appear inactive when people puzzle over game strategy. Amateur chess and GO players do not use an area that is believed to house general intelligence, sometimes called 'g', US and Chinese researchers have found. "It's a provocative claim," admits team member Sheng He, who is based at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The result goes against common sense. Chess is considered one of the most mentally taxing of pursuits. And the Chinese game GO, in which players use stones to ring-fence territory on a grid, is thought to be on a cerebral par. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Intelligence; Brain imaging
Link ID: 3163 - Posted: 06.24.2010

RICHMOND, VA, – A team of researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have linked an area of chromosome 10p to families with a history of bulimia nervosa, providing strong evidence that genes play a determining role in who is susceptible to developing the eating disorder. The finding, gleaned from blood studies of 316 patients with bulimia and their family members, is the result of the first multinational collaborative genome-wide linkage scan to look exclusively at bulimia. Earlier this year, another linkage scan found evidence of genes for the eating disorder anorexia nervosa on chromosome 1. This study, led by Walter H. Kaye, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic (WPIC), and authored by Cynthia M. Bulik, Ph.D., a professor in VCU's Department of Psychiatry and a researcher at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics in Richmond, VA, appears today in the online edition of the American Journal of Human Genetics. It will be published in the Jan. 1, 2003 print edition.

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 3162 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Knight Ridder News ORLANDO, Fla. – John Opellana took his first sips of wine at age 10, under his dad’s supervision in France. Now, the 19-year-old college freshman prefers vodka and beer, which occasionally lead to drunken nights and hung-over mornings when he can’t recall all that happened. “After I turned 18, I suddenly started drinking and forgetting,” the Rollins College student said. “I have flashes that I can’t remember.” Copyright © 2002 The Orlando Sentinel.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 3161 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BY PAUL G. DONOHUE, M.D. DEAR DR. DONOHUE: I was told I have an underactive thyroid gland. After I started taking thyroid hormones, my TSH read 4.7. Three months later, it dropped to 0.8, and the doctor told me to reduce my dose of thyroid hormone. Now it has gone up to 13.8, and I was told to increase my dose of thyroid hormone. I don't understand all this. I can't find anything in medical books. Can you help me? -- C.C. ANSWER: TSH -- thyroid-stimulating hormone -- comes from the pituitary gland at the base of the brain. It is the barometer of blood thyroid-hormone levels. Its function is to regulate production of thyroid hormone by the thyroid gland in the neck. High numbers of TSH indicate that the pituitary is trying to whip the thyroid gland into overproduction because there is too little thyroid hormone on board. That's a confusing point. It bears repeating. A high TSH reading indicates a low production of thyroid hormone. And conversely, a low TSH reading indicates the thyroid gland is overproducing thyroid hormone. It's a bit like a thermostat regulating a furnace. When the thermostat registers a too-high temperature, it turns the furnace off; a too-low reading turns the furnace on. Your original TSH reading (not included in your letter) must have been high, indicating your thyroid gland was on an extended lunch break. After you started taking thyroid hormone in tablet form, the TSH reading dropped too low, indicating you were taking too much medicine. The TSH test guides the doctor in adjusting thyroid hormone doses. (c) 2002 North America Syndicate Inc.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 3160 - Posted: 12.12.2002