Bernice Porjesz, Ph.D., Department of Psychiatry, State University of New York, Health Sciences Center at Brooklyn, and others from six of the nine universities that comprise NIAAA's Collaborative Study of the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) report in today's online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (99[6]:3729-3733) significant linkage and linkage disequilibrium between beta brain wave (EEG) frequency and a cluster of gamma-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA) receptor genes on human chromosome 4. Conducted in the laboratory of COGA Principal Investigator Dr. Henri Begleiter, the study is coauthored by Laura Almasy, Ph.D., Howard J. Edenberg, Ph.D., and Theodore Reich, Ph.D., among others. "Drs. Porjesz and Begleiter are the first to find a specific genetic locus associated with fundamental human brain oscillations. Their work contributes to understanding of brain neuroelectric activity and expedites our search for alcoholism risk and protective genes," said NIAAA Acting Director Raynard S. Kington, M.D., Ph.D.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 1676 - Posted: 03.13.2002

Artist and professor get inside view of their differing mindsets as images go on show in exhibition at Museum of Science Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent The Guardian An internationally renowned contemporary artist and a professor of neuropsychology peered into their own brains yesterday, to see if they could identify what made them different. Richard Wentworth, the artist, and Richard Gregory, emeritus professor of neuropsychology at Bristol University, discovered they had more in common than their first names. As boys they took carpentry classes on Saturdays: but if this was influenced by any part of their brains, neither could spot it, until yesterday. © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 1675 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism announces a 5-year initiative funded at approximately $50 million to define the brain circuits and mechanisms that underlie behavioral responses to chronic and excessive alcohol consumption. The multidisciplinary Integrative Neuroscience Initiative on Alcoholism (INIA) will integrate research knowledge from animal and human studies and multiple analytic approaches to understand the behavioral neuroadaptive process — changes in the brain that occur with chronic alcohol exposure that contribute to excessive drinking. "Neuroadaptation produces a variety of behavioral responses implicated in the disorders alcohol abuse (a harmful drinking pattern that does not entail addiction) and alcohol dependence or addiction, commonly known as alcoholism," said NIAAA Acting Director Raynard Kington, M.D., Ph.D. "In particular, INIA seeks to clarify the mechanisms of reinforcement, tolerance, and sensitization that drive compulsive drinking, and the withdrawal and relapse that complicate successful treatment. As with all alcohol research, INIA has as its ultimate goal improved treatment and preventive interventions

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 1674 - Posted: 06.24.2010

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A hormone in pregnant women which prevents the immune system from attacking the fetus may hold the key to halting auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Australian researchers said on Tuesday. The researchers said they hoped to begin phase one clinical trials of a drug based on the hormone in about a year. An offshoot of Sydney's University of New South Wales and biotech firm CBio Ltd on Tuesday signed a deal to produce enough Early Pregnancy Factor -- a modified version of a naturally occurring protein -- to begin the toxicity tests. Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 1673 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Doctors have begun to treat people who suffer from a compulsive need to shop with a drug originally designed to treat depression. For many shopping can provide an uplifting boost. But with consumer spending soaring, it is estimated that nearly one in five people has a problem keeping their shopping habits under control. Particularly among women. Easier credit, peer pressure and advertising have been blamed. US doctors have responded by prescribing the drug Cipramil for shopaholics who carry on buying despite running into huge debt. The drug is an anti-depressant from the same family as Prozac. (C) BBC

Keyword: Depression; OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Link ID: 1671 - Posted: 03.12.2002

By ERIC NAGOURNEY Some children who exhibit attention and hyperactivity problems may really be suffering from a sleep disorder, researchers suggest. A study found a significant link between problems like snoring at night and behavioral problems during the day. If the findings are confirmed, said the lead author, Dr. Ronald Chervin of the Michael S. Aldrich Sleep Disorders Laboratory at the University of Michigan, it may mean that simple fatigue causes the problem. "We wonder if the children are sleepy, and are expressing their sleepiness differently than adults do," said Dr. Chervin, who suggested that some children now being given drugs like Ritalin might benefit more from treatment for sleep disorders. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD; Sleep
Link ID: 1670 - Posted: 03.12.2002

By C. CLAIBORNE RAY [Q] . What is brown fat? How does it affect the human body? A. Brown fat, known to scientists as brown adipose tissue, is a kind of thermal insurance for infant mammals; the supply tends to shrink as mammals age. In human infants, it forms about 5 percent of body weight but is almost all gone by adulthood. White fat, which is more widely distributed and persistent, is a storage depot for energy, usually as single drops of triglyceride. Brown fat, however, is an immediate energy resource that quickly grows active when an animal is exposed to the cold. Each cell usually contains many triglyceride droplets of different sizes. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 1669 - Posted: 03.12.2002

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) today awarded the first installment of an expected $6 million grant over 5 years to researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for major expansion of a collaborative effort to identify autism vulnerability genes. Daniel Geschwind, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute will direct the project, in partnership with the citizens group Cure Autism Now (CAN), to add 300 more families to its Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE) gene bank. The information and samples gathered in the study will be broadly shared with the research community through AGRE and a repository maintained by the NIMH Human Genetics Initiative. Autism begins in early childhood and impairs thinking, feeling, language and the ability to relate to others. While causes and effective treatments have thus far eluded science, evidence suggests that the disorder is highly heritable. However, it is thought to stem from interactions among multiple, as yet unknown, genes, complicating the research challenge. Recent genome scans have identified several chromosomal sites likely harboring disease vulnerability genes.

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 1668 - Posted: 03.12.2002

Ivanhoe Newswire) -- They look like snakes wrestling in a patient's brain and when these brain malformations rupture, they can lead to brain damage or death. However, many patients don't even know they have arteriovenous malformations (AVMs). Researchers have now developed a simple, safe way to minimize the disastrous effects of AVMs. AVMs are dense clusters of blood vessels that twist and turn around each other in the brain. Patients with AVMs may experience extremely painful headaches, but many are unaware of their condition. To treat the condition, doctors traditionally use a special type of glue to seal off the vessels that send blood to the AVMs. However, doctors do not know if the vessels they block will cause irreversible damage to brain tissue. Previous research shows 7 percent to 39 percent of patients experience brain damage after this operation and up to 3 percent of patients will die. Copyright © 2002 Ivanhoe Broadcast News, Inc.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 1667 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Critics say the government's new anti-drug campaign is reactionary and moralistic. Worse, it may not even work. By Janelle Brown This is your brain on drugs. Just say no. What's your anti-drug? D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs. Billions have been spent on catchy slogans and flashy branding to make the rejection of drugs as appealing as the consumption of candy. But have the dollars devoted to educating, cajoling, pleading and frightening us away from drugs done the job? Even those who make the ads admit a limited return on this investment: Teenagers see anti-drug ads 2.7 times a week, according to the government's numbers. And yet 54 percent of all teens try drugs before they graduate from high school. Propaganda from the War on Drugs was supplanted by dispatches from the War on Terrorism during the waning months of 2001. But last month, the Office for National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) found a way to marry the two battles in its latest anti-drug campaign, which equates drug use with financing terrorists. At the same time, the Partnership for a Drug Free America debuted its own ambitious anti-Ecstasy crusade entitled "Ecstasy: Where's the Love?" Copyright 2002 Salon.com

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 1666 - Posted: 03.12.2002

Obese patients could be helped by experiments which suggest a particular hormone can affect appetite in humans. Ghrelin - or a drug designed to cancel its effects - might be able to help both people who are eating too little, such as cancer patients, or those who eat too much. The level of obesity-related diseases is growing steadily in the UK - they are estimated to cost £2.5bn and kill up to 30,000 people a year. The search for an effective appetite-limiting pill is also widespread, and only partly successful. However, doctors from Imperial College, London, and the city's Hammersmith Hospital, claim that Ghrelin is the first circulating hormone which appears to increase food consumption in humans. (C) BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 1665 - Posted: 03.11.2002

By SARAH KERSHAW Linda Richard thought she would feel better by now. Instead, she is more anxious, more afraid, more paranoid. Six months after Sept. 11, she cannot sleep. She is overeating, taking the anti- depressants she had stopped using last spring, and her apartment, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, is a mess. There are too many Mondays spent under the covers, staring at the receipt for the last thing she bought at the World Trade Center — a pretzel — and ignoring the telephone. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 1664 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In blind and blindfolded-sighted people, spatial language worked as well as audio cues, aiding the design of navigation tools for the visually impaired WASHINGTON - Designers of navigation systems for the visually impaired can tap new evidence of the mind's ability to update its internal "maps" relative to the body, using audio sounds or verbal directions with equal effectiveness. The findings can foster tools that not only get people from one point to another, but also help them build better mental images of their total environment -- including important places (such as pay phones or shops) not directly in their path. The research is reported in the March issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). Three psychologists and a prominent geographer from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Carnegie Mellon University took 10 blindfolded, sighted participants and six blind participants to a grassy field to see how well they could walk to a target location. They learned their target location from one of two stimuli. One was an auditory 3-D stimulus at the target location, a loudspeaker playing a synthesized voice that said "Speaker 3." The other was an experimenter speaking in spatial language, with "o'clock" terminology for direction and linear feet for distance (for example, "2 o'clock, 10 feet" to walk 10 feet in a north-northeast direction). In some trials, participants were asked to walk directly to the target; in others, they walked forward from their starting point, then had to turn and walk toward the target after being tapped on the shoulder. © PsycNET 2002 American Psychological Association

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 1663 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Cindy Starr, Post staff reporter A year ago, Dan Lewin was on the verge of disability and disaster. Forty years old and a critical financial provider for his wife and a blended family of seven children, he was becoming increasingly crippled by Parkinson's disease, a progressive disorder of the nervous system. Some nights Lewin was so uncomfortable he could hardly sleep. Some mornings his legs cramped so badly he could hardly walk. He frequently awoke with paralyzing leg cramps. ''I was losing functionality in my legs and arms, and the tremors were worse,'' the Edgewood resident recalled. ''I was worn out because of tremors and slowness of movement. I couldn't do anything. It was complicated to even write my name.'' Copyright 2001 The Cincinnati Post, an E.W. Scripps newspaper.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 1662 - Posted: 03.11.2002

By Bruce Lieberman UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER Dr. Arthur Toga, a UCLA neuroscientist deep into research on how Alzheimer's disease devastates the aging brain, relies on a stunning amount of data to create images that map the mind. The analyses illustrate what the brain of an Alzheimer's patient looks like, and how and where the disease progresses over time. Research into Alzheimer's and other brain disorders promises to accelerate under a national initiative headed by UCSD. © Copyright 2002 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 1661 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists believe they have identified a "master gene" linked to epilepsy and learning difficulties. Although other genes which can help cause epilepsy have already been identified, this gene controls how, where and when other genes work, affecting the way the brain functions. The Australian team behind the research said their discovery was likely to impact most on families and isolated cases with "non-specific" learning difficulties. Until now these could only be diagnosed by delayed development and intellectual impairment. The researchers, from the Women's and Children's Hospital in Adelaide, estimate up to 2% of the population suffers from learning difficulties and the same percentage from epilepsy. (C) BBC

Keyword: Epilepsy; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 1660 - Posted: 03.11.2002

Help for those still suffering stress from September 11 In the days after the September 11 attacks, a RAND Corp. survey found that 90% of Americans were suffering from stress related to the horrific events. Many have recovered. But for perhaps a third of those most directly affected--survivors, relatives of those who died, rescue workers--the misery continues. It has turned into chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Characterized by sleep disruption, flashbacks, and a desire to avoid any reminder of the occurrence, this condition is considered chronic if symptoms persist beyond three months. After six months, they stand an increased chance of becoming permanent. That's why anyone with serious symptoms--whether related to September 11 or some other traumatic event--should seek help. Also, new studies suggest that chronic stress may be linked to biological changes in parts of the brain associated with fear and memory. The brain may essentially start overreacting, causing repeated release of fear hormones and creating a vicious cycle of stress. Among those suffering from September 11 fallout is a 40-year-old New York firefighter who asked not to be identified. He was off-duty but rushed to the World Trade Center in time to watch the second tower fall. He spent the next three days crawling over the rubble, looking for friends he will never see again. Then came dreams of planes hitting buildings, of himself riding one of the towers down, of being in a room and hearing himself called up to die. Along with difficulty sleeping, he felt jumpy and emotionally detached--both classic PTSD symptoms. For two months, the firefighter used sleeping pills as he rotated among work, Ground Zero searches, and funerals for friends. Then he went to a therapist. "Not much has gotten easier, but I am not as depressed," he says now. "I'm having better days." Copyright 2002 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 1659 - Posted: 03.11.2002

Scientists have identified a key brain protein involved in retaining memories, which could help explain why some are stored away and some are not. So far, US researchers have only carried out the work on the brain patterns of mice. But the discovery could one day lead to the development of drugs that could treat age-related memory loss in humans. The scientists, from Columbia University in New York, looked at a protein called CREB (cAMP response element binding protein). CREB operates in the nucleus of brain cells and helps to activate genes which it has been thought could be involved in the formation of long-term memory. The scientists examined mice which had been genetically modified so that their brain contained an altered form of the protein which was always active. (C) BBC

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 1658 - Posted: 03.10.2002

Scans of 'emotion engine' spot if we mean what we say Robin McKie, science editor The Observer Scanners that could determine our political beliefs, pinpoint our involvements in crime, or even uncover extra-marital liaisons are being developed by neurologists. It sounds like science fiction, but the idea is being taken seriously by neurologists following breakthroughs in research on the amygdala, an almond-shaped region of the forebrain. During one trial, scientists read the electrical patterns of amygdalas in individuals undergoing cognitive trials and decoded volunteers' emotions from their scanners. © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002

Keyword: Emotions; Brain imaging
Link ID: 1657 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Chris Marshall noticed it when he snorkeled with manatees: Even when he remained still and quiet in murky water, they kept a safe distance. It was as if the lumbering sea cows had a sixth sense that kept them posted on his location. Now, Marshall, who did his doctoral research at the University of Florida, and two UF colleagues think they've discovered exactly what that sense is. In a paper accepted last month at the journal Brain, Behavior and Evolution , the researchers argue that manatees use small hairs on their body as "tiny antennas" that pick up information about water currents, nearby landscape and the presence of other animals. Copyright © 1995-2002 UniSci. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Animal Migration
Link ID: 1656 - Posted: 06.24.2010