A group of researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have solved the structure of an enzyme that modulates central nervous system (CNS) functions such as pain perception, cognition, feeding, sleep, and locomotor activity. The enzyme, described in the latest issue of the journal Science, is called fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH), and it breaks down certain fatty signaling molecules that reside in the lipid membranes of CNS cells. The TSRI group reports that FAAH modulates the action of these fatty signaling molecules through an unusual mechanism of action whereby it scoops them out of the cell membranes and chews them up. "I envision that if someone could make a specific inhibitor to FAAH, you could, in principal, get pain relief without any of the side effects," says Benjamin Cravatt, one of the paper's lead authors and an investigator in TSRI's Department of Cell Biology, Department of Chemistry, and The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 3084 - Posted: 12.01.2002

Berkeley - Nearly 40 years ago scientists were startled to discover that the eye, far from being a still camera, actually has cells that respond to movement. Moreover, these cells are specialized to respond to movement in one direction only, such as left to right or right to left. Now, in a paper in this week's issue of the journal Nature, biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, have finally detailed the cellular circuit responsible for motion detection in the eye's retina. This circuit, which enables us to track moving objects, serves as an example of other brain circuits, some of which perform thousands of computations every second. The findings could aid the design of bionic eyes that track motion and process visual information like our own eyes.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 3083 - Posted: 12.01.2002

Baby's first look at the world is likely a dizzying array of shapes and motion that are meaningless to a newborn, but researchers at the University of Rochester have now shown that babies use relationships between objects to build an understanding of the world. By noting how often objects appear together, infants can efficiently take in more knowledge than if they were to simply see the same shapes individually, says the paper published in the current issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Roughly 100 babies, all about nine months of age, watched a series of shapes such as squares, circles, and arrows appearing together on a screen while researchers watched the babies' attention. József Fiser postdoctoral fellow and Richard N. Aslin, professor of brain and cognitive sciences, wanted to see if the nine-month-olds would pay more attention to the pairs of shapes that occurred most often in a crowded scene. "It's long been assumed that we use relationships among parts of scenes to learn which parts form whole objects, but the idea has never been tested, nor was it clear how early this ability develops," says Fiser. "This research shows that building a concept of the world by recognizing relationships among shapes in images is possibly innate, and a very essential ability in babies."

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 3082 - Posted: 12.01.2002

Environmental enrichment that stimulates brain activity can reverse the long-term learning deficits caused by lead poisoning, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health . It has long been known that lead poisoning in children affects their cognitive and behavioral development. Despite significant efforts to reduce lead contamination in homes, childhood lead poisoning remains a major public health problem with an estimated 34 million housing units in the United States containing lead paint. The Hopkins study is the first to demonstrate that the long-term deficits in cognitive function caused by lead can be reversed and offers a basis for the treatment of childhood lead intoxication. The findings appear in the online edition of the Annals of Neurology. “Lead exposure during development causes long-lasting deficits in learning in experimental animals, but our study shows for the first time that these cognitive deficits are reversible,” said lead author Tomás R. Guilarte, PhD, professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “This study is particularly important for two reasons. First, it was not known until now whether the effects of lead on cognitive function were reversible. Secondly, the environmental enrichment that reversed the learning deficits was administered after the animals were exposed to lead. Environmental enrichment could be a promising therapy for treating millions of children suffering from the effects of lead poisoning,” added Dr. Guilarte.

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 3081 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Susan R. Farrer, Contributing Writer Health Behavior News Service Avoiding stressful life events and learning effective coping skills may help avert flare-ups of multiple sclerosis (MS) in women with the disease, new findings suggest. Researchers recruited 23 women with MS from the Multiple Sclerosis Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and followed them for a year. Each week, the women completed questionnaires asking about MS symptoms and life events, such as starting a new job, finding out that a child is doing poorly in school, having a motor vehicle accident, and being physically assaulted. Every four weeks, the women were interviewed about the nature and timing of life events they had experienced, and the life events data were later analyzed with the MS exacerbation data.

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Stress
Link ID: 3080 - Posted: 12.01.2002

A group of Japanese scientists has transplanted the brain of a baby rat into the thigh of a grown-up rat as an experiment to see how brain tissue can survive after its blood supply is cut off. The Kyodo News Agency reports the scientists at Jichi Medical School in Tochigi, north of Tokyo, removed the head of a 12-day-old rat and connected its blood vessels to those in the thigh of the adult rat. It took the team 90 minutes to graft the rat's brain into the thigh, but the organ survived and its neurological functions developed after the transplant. © 2002 Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Robotics
Link ID: 3079 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Findings suggest how tiny jolts can steady tremor sufferers By ALEXANDRA WITZE / The Dallas Morning News ORLANDO, Fla. – Everybody likes to stimulate their brains, usually to make themselves feel smarter. But for some people, it's a medical necessity. People who suffer from Parkinson's or other tremor-related diseases sometimes benefit from deep brain stimulation – a surgery in which doctors implant a small device that sends an electrical signal to a specific part of the brain. Just as a pacemaker uses electricity to regulate an erratic heartbeat, deep brain stimulation uses electricity to pace the firing of nerve cells, or neurons, that control movement. Used with or instead of medication, the surgery often lets patients regain control over involuntary jerks like those experienced during Parkinson's. But nobody knows why. ©2002 Belo Interactive

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 3078 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Shankar Vedantam Washington Post Staff Writer A new type of medicine to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was approved yesterday by the Food and Drug Administration, bringing with it the promise that the most common psychiatric disorder of childhood may be treated with fewer side effects -- and less controversy. Atomoxetine, which will be marketed under the brand name Strattera, will join in January such drugs as Ritalin that are prescribed by physicians. It will become the first medicine to treat ADHD that is not a stimulant. Early studies have indicated that the new medicine does not cause insomnia, and is generally well tolerated by children, adolescents and adults. No comprehensive studies have compared the effectiveness of the new medicine against the older drugs, so it will be months before clinicians can establish which drug works best for each patient. © 2002 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: ADHD; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 3077 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Many Gulf War veterans claim to have been affected A battery of nerve tests carried out on former servicemen who claim exposure to chemicals during the Gulf War made them ill has failed to find any trace of damage. The MoD-funded study - to be published in the journal Neurology on Tuesday - was instantly condemned as "propaganda" by veterans groups. Many veterans say that they have fallen sick with a variety of unexplained symptoms since serving in the Middle East. Their symptoms include fatigue, joint stiffness, muscle weakness and pain, and even bladder, bowel or sexual dysfunction. While no link has ever been proven, they claim that exposure to chemicals during their time of service could have triggered this. Researchers at Guy's Hospital in London compared Gulf War veterans complaining of illness with others apparently in good health. (C) BBC

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 3076 - Posted: 11.25.2002

NewScientist.com news service A public inquiry into controversial proposals to build a new primate research facility on the outskirts of Cambridge, UK, is set to begin on Tuesday. Leading the opposition to the centre are animal welfare groups. Not only do they object on moral grounds to experiments on primates, they also plan to challenge the entire scientific rationale for such research. Ranged against them are the centre's supporters, who say that failure to build it will stymie neuroscience across Europe. Without it, they say, progress towards badly needed new treatments for stroke, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and substance abuse will be delayed. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 3075 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Ann Quigley, Contributing Writer Health Behavior News Service Subtle alterations of a hormonal stress response system called the HPA axis may play a role in chronic fatigue syndrome, according to a study in the November/December issue of Psychosomatic Medicine. A smoothly functioning hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal, or HPA, axis helps the body remain stable under physiological and psychological stress through the actions of three hormones. First, the brain portion called the hypothalamus secretes a hormone that stimulates the pituitary gland to secrete a second hormone. This second hormone causes the adrenal glands to create cortisol. Problems can occur at any point in this process and result in a variety of diseases. A research team led by Jens Gaab, Ph.D., of the Center for Psychobiological and Psychosomatic Research at the University of Trier in Trier, Germany; and the Institute of Psychology at the University of Zürich in Switzerland are proposing that chronic fatigue syndrome may be one of them.

Keyword: Stress; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 3074 - Posted: 11.25.2002

By Michael Zager The decision to cut music classes at Galaxy Elementary School, reported in the Oct. 31 South Florida Sun-Sentinel, is, in my opinion, intellectually irresponsible and short-sighted. Music, and the arts in general, have proven value in a child's education. Gordon Shaw of the University of California, Irvine, said that when "children exercise cortical neurons by listening to classical music, they are also strengthening circuits used for mathematics. Music excites the inherent brain patterns and enhances their use in complex reasoning tasks." (This article appeared in the Feb. 19, 1996, of Newsweek magazine:Your Child's Brain.) Copyright 2002, Sun-Sentinel Co. & South Florida Interactive, Inc.

Keyword: Hearing; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 3073 - Posted: 11.25.2002

Between three million and 3.5 million adults in the EU have probably tried ecstasy at least once, says a European drug monitoring body. Up to half a million have taken it once a week or more at some time in their lives, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. In a review of the situation across the EU's 15 member states, the Lisbon-based agency found that most users of ecstasy and other synthetic drugs are not people on the "margins" of society or in any way disadvantaged. Instead, most are students or young professionals, most of them relatively well off. "These trends seem to have established themselves rapidly across the EU," said Mike Trace, the Centre's chairman. "The main reasons people say they consume ecstasy is to feel more pleasure when they dance, and to have fun," the Centre said in statement. (C) BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 3072 - Posted: 11.24.2002

By LISA SANDERS, M.D. ''I'm sorry,'' he said. His voice was quiet and kind, hard to hear over the noise of the clinic just outside my office door. He was a stranger to me, an old friend of someone we both knew. ''I'd chatted with her on the phone maybe 20 minutes earlier. She said come by, and so I just drove on over.'' He pulled into the driveway and saw her sunbathing in the tiny yard. His first thought when he saw her was of how pretty she was. ''I'm a married man, so it wasn't like that, but she's always been a looker.'' He shouted hello, and when she didn't wake, he approached her and put his hand on her shoulder. He felt her warm skin, then noticed how strangely pale she was under her tan. ''And I knew then. I knew. Her cellphone was right there next to her, like it always was, so I picked it up and dialed 911.'' I thought back to the last time I'd seen her: tan cheeks still unlined, clear blue eyes, deep tobacco-coarsened drawl and earthy sense of humor. I closed my office door. My beautiful and mysterious little sister was dead. My next thought, when thought was finally possible, was: How? It's what patients' families had so often asked me, and now I know why. More than anything, I wanted to know, How can a young woman die so suddenly she doesn't even have time to call for help? Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 3071 - Posted: 11.24.2002

Legal and illegal animal rights actions continue Animal rights activists will not go away, and researchers must prepare to be targeted, according to three scientists whose organizations have developed guidelines for responding to this movement. Animal rights campaigners are taking a long-term view in their crusade to end all human use of animals and scientists need to be aware of their own vulnerability, the scientists say. Lobbyists are already pursuing legal avenues to extend rights once reserved for humans to other animals and are meeting with some success. "We should all keep in mind that [the work of animal rights groups] is not directed toward the welfare of animals," says Stephen Zola, director of the Yerkes Primate Research Center at Emory University, Atlanta. "It's toward the abolition of the use of animals in any domain." Andrew Butler, campaign coordinator at PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), says researchers' failure to compromise drives activists to extremes. A biotechnology company that used beagles for research recently refused PETA's request to release the dogs when the project was complete, for example. "I think that is the sort of behavior that leads people to act and campaign against these sorts of organizations," Butler says, adding that PETA mounted 48 separate demonstrations against the company. Establishing the legal standing of animals is an objective of some groups, and last June, Germany changed its constitution to guarantee certain animals' rights, making it the first European country to do so. Trends in animal rights generally start in Europe and shift to the United States, according to Frankie Trull, president of the National Association for Biomedical Research. ©2002, The Scientist Inc.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 3070 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Animal welfare groups lobby for state legislation By Ted Agres Animal welfare activists, smarting from a defeat in Congress, plan to campaign across the United States to convince state legislators that laboratory rats, mice, and birds used in biomedical research require greater protection than afforded by federal law. Most major US research organizations, however, maintain that the 15 to 20 million animals used in labs--about 95% in biomedical research--are adequately protected under existing public and private regulations. More federal oversight, they say, would only burden researchers with paperwork and expense while creating no real benefit for the animals. The 2002 Omnibus Farm Bill, signed into law in May, included an amendment exempting "birds, rats of the genus Rattus, and mice of the genus Mus , bred for research" from the Animal Welfare Act. The AWA requires researchers to keep records by cage or by research protocol for most warm-blooded vertebrates, whereas records for cats, dogs, and nonhuman primates must be maintained for individual animals. Enforced by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the AWA regulations have teeth: Violators are punishable by fines of as much as $2,500 per violation per day. RATS AT RISK Major research organizations have feared that scientists might be required to keep records on millions of caged lab animals to comply with AWA's bookkeeping requirements. The cost of this paperwork, reporting, and inspection could total $280 million annually, according to the American Physiological Society (APS). By excluding some of the most common lab animals from AWA, Congress handed biomedical research establishments a victory during their long and frequently contentious battle with animal welfare activists.1 In response, animal rights groups have carried their standards into the states. "We're confident we're going to be able to revisit the issue," says John McArdle, executive director of the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation (ARDF) in Eden Prairie, Minn. ©2002, The Scientist Inc

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 3069 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Brain injuries in babies may in some cases be linked to an infection in their mother's placenta, say researchers. They believe their research could lead to new tests that could help prevent babies being born with injuries to their brains. The crucial time is the period just before and during birth. Children seem to be at risk if their mother develops an infection called chorioamnionitis during this period. The infection causes fever, inflammation and abnormally high heart rates in the unborn child. Earlier studies have pointed to lack of oxygen as the primary cause for neonatal brain injuries, including cerebral palsy. (C) BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 3068 - Posted: 11.23.2002

Carol Marzuola Anybody who's ever moved a muscle toward a leash will agree that dogs understand human body language. The animals' capacity to do this, suggests new research, was evolutionarily engrained since they became people's canine companion about 15,000 years ago. Previous studies have shown that dogs can use human cues to find hidden food. For example, dogs that watch experimenters look or point at a sealed bowl enclosing a meal then choose correctly between that container and an empty one. "Conventional wisdom would say that [people] train dogs to do this," explains Michael Tomasello, a comparative psychologist at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany. But his team's findings support another view. Tomasello and his colleagues compared various animals taking the food-container challenge. Dogs were always better than human-reared wolves at finding the food. And they even outwitted chimpanzees. The research team was surprised to find that 9-to-26-week-old puppies, including some rarely exposed to people, could use the researchers' cues to find food. From Science News, Vol. 162, No. 21, Nov. 23, 2002, p. 324. Copyright ©2002 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Animal Communication; Evolution
Link ID: 3067 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Susan Milius Two genetic studies have just rewritten the history of humanity's best friend. The new version has moved the origins of the domestic dog from the Middle East to East Asia and argues that the first people to venture into the Americas brought their dogs with them. Analysis of 654 dogs from around the world suggests that their earliest female ancestors originated from several lineages of wolves primarily in one region, says Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The patterns of genetic diversity point to East Asia as the likeliest place for the canine Eden, Savolainen and his colleagues argue in the Nov. 22 Science. "This has been the search for the dog Eve," says Savolainen. From Science News, Vol. 162, No. 21, Nov. 23, 2002, p. 324. Copyright ©2002 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 3066 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By TOM SIEGFRIED / The Dallas Morning News ORLANDO, Fla. – If you've had senior moments since you've been a junior, maybe you've got the loser version of a gene for memory. If you smoke, your genes aren't what they used to be, or at least don't do what they used to do. And if you're pregnant and taking Prozac, you'll want to watch for new results from a Canadian study of baby rats. ©2002 Belo Interactive

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Trophic Factors
Link ID: 3065 - Posted: 06.24.2010