Elephants don't forget—at least, female elephants don't. Elephant families are matriarchal. And the social knowledge acquired by the oldest females is the key-stone of a familial group's survival, according to a study published in April by Karen McComb, a biologist at Sussex University in England. Elephants announce their presence by rumbling loudly, a practice referred to as contact calling. An unfamiliar call may mean that an elephant from outside the family group is nearby. A stranger can cause trouble, disrupting feeding or harassing young calves. So an elephant matriarch signals the family to bunch around her; then they all lift their trunks in the air to smell the unidentified caller. False alarms can create stress for the group and take time and energy away from feeding, so survival may depend in part on getting it right. © Copyright 2002 The Walt Disney Company.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 1202 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Hope for Stroke Patients A brain severely injured by stroke or other calamities may be more adaptable to recovery than previously thought. A neuroscience team led by Claus Hilgetag of Boston University's School of Medicine reported in September that temporarily knocking out one-half of the brain can boost the performance of the other half. Researchers fired focused magnetic pulses through the skulls of healthy volunteers for 10 minutes to temporarily induce hemispatial neglect, mimicking the damage caused by a brain lesion. © Copyright 2002 The Walt Disney Company.

Keyword: Stroke; Laterality
Link ID: 1201 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Learn if you are salmon or sole. By Eric Haseltine Have you ever pondered why salmon meat is red and filet of sole white? For that matter, what makes chicken thighs darker than chicken breasts? The answer is that there are roughly two types of muscle fibers: reddish tissue that has lots of endurance (due to heavy concentrations of dark, oxygen bearing myoglobin) and pale fibers that have pitifully little myoglobin and stamina, but enormous speed and strength. This division of labor makes sense when you consider that sometimes, like when you're taking a long hike, your muscles need endurance, while other times -for instance when you're removing large boulders from the garden-you must summon short bursts of explosive strength. Although all muscles contain a mixture of both fiber types, certain muscle groups tend to have more of one fiber category than the other because of their unique functions. For instance, leg muscles that keep you standing for long periods tend to be darker, while those active in short spurts (like the breast muscles chickens use to flap their wings) tend to be lighter. Reddish fibers are sometimes called "slow twitch" because they contract up to 10 times more slowly than their whiter cousins. Salmon, who must swim long distances over many days have primarily red, slow muscles because staying power is much more important to their lifestyle than speed. Sole, on the other hand, don't need much endurance because they lounge around on the sea bottom. But when sole do have to move, say, when a predator gets too interested in them, they have to move in a hurry. © Copyright 2001 The Walt Disney Company.

Keyword: Biomechanics
Link ID: 1200 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Out of Left Field: Studies of chimpanzees finally give southpaws a fair shake By Jocelyn Selim At the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, a large chimpanzee named Winston is taking part in an unusually pleasant experiment. Using his left hand, he reaches over and grabs a length of PVC pipe from primatologist Bill Hopkins, then he uses his right to scoop out some peanut butter smeared inside. "Winston's a righty," Hopkins says, offering another piece of pipe to a smaller chimp hovering nearby. This one grabs the pipe with his right hand and digs out the peanut butter with his left. "That's Winston's younger brother," Hopkins says. Over the past 10 years, Hopkins's research has offered the first definitive proof that apes, like humans, have hand preferences: A third of the Yerkes chimpanzees are lefties and the rest are righties. But Winston and his brother point to an even more intriguing pattern: The younger the sibling, the more likely he or she is to be a lefty. And if handedness is clearly tied to birth order in chimps, it could throw a monkey wrench into theories of handedness in humans as well. Granted, those theories already have a lot of explaining to do. Among humans, lefties are more likely than righties to suffer from dyslexia, schizophrenia, stuttering, and other disorders. But lefties are also more likely to be Mensa members, musicians, and U.S. presidents (Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr., and Ronald Reagan are all left-handed). And al-though left-handedness runs in families—notably in Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, and Prince William—more than two-thirds of all lefties are born to right-handed couples. Even identical twins often have opposite hand preferences. © Copyright 2002 The Walt Disney Company.

Keyword: Laterality
Link ID: 1199 - Posted: 06.24.2010

HELEN PEARSON Super-sensitive to stroking but impervious to pinch: US researchers have manufactured mice with shifted senses. A touch receptor identified in the skin could be the target for future drugs to ease pain or heighten pleasure. Sensory cells and nerve endings scattered over the skin distinguish a pat from a poke. The receptors that convert touch to an electrical signal, however, are largely unknown. * Welsh, M.J. et al. The DRASIC cation channel contributes to the detection of cutaneous touch and acid stimuli in mice. Neuron, 32, 1071 - 1083, (2001). * Price, M.P. et al. The mammalian sodium channel BNC1 is required for normal touch sensation. Nature, 407, 1007 - 1011, (2000). © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2001

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 1197 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Two neuroscientists from UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas collaborated with cancer investigators in New York and Australia to determine the structures of protein molecules that bind together to initiate two-way signaling between human cells. They described the molecular details of how neurons sense their environment as they project their fibers to distant locations in the body. This finding was reported in a September issue of Nature. Now, a team from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, in collaboration with Henkemeyer, has derived three-dimensional picture of the molecules that mediate this novel cell-to-cell communication system. The molecules are called Eph and Ephrin proteins.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 1196 - Posted: 12.20.2001

Best treatment for traumatized patients: don't relive memories HAIFA, Israel and NEW YORK, N.Y., After September 11, requests for sleep medications had increased some 30 percent in New York City, while 23 percent of Americans nationwide said they had been suffering from insomnia. But in fact, many trauma survivors sleep much better than they think they do, according to a report in the Dec. 20 New England Journal of Medicine. The report, "Sleep Disturbances in the Wake of Traumatic Events," by Dr. Peretz Lavie, an influential sleep researcher and head of the Sleep Laboratory at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, also questions the traditional treatment for traumatized patients, which is based on reliving the trauma. Dr. Lavie’s studies with Holocaust survivors suggest that learning to leave traumatic memories behind may be more effective for a good night’s sleep.

Keyword: Stress; Sleep
Link ID: 1195 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Summarized by Robert W. Griffith, MD Most of us have probably read of the new study that suggests that taking an NSAID (a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug) can protect you from getting Alzheimer's disease. Indeed, many of us in the upper age brackets are wondering if we should start taking something like ibuprophen (Advil) or diclofenac (Voltaren), just in case. Here's a summary of the study and an accompanying editorial [1] published in the New England Journal of Medicine. As we have pointed out in an earlier article, the pathological process termed inflammation occupies a central position in the development of Alzheimer's disease. [2] So using an anti-inflammatory drug would appear a logical step. Several studies done in the early 1990s showed that taking NSAIDs was associated with delayed onset or a reduced frequency of Alzheimer's. Since then, however, two other studies were unable to reproduce this effect. Why the differences in results? It seems the timing or duration of NSAID use was probably responsible. Copyright © 2001 Novartis Foundation for Gerontology. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 1194 - Posted: 06.24.2010

PHILIP BALL In the season of office parties, a team of US and UK scientists cautions that by far the clearest indication of drunkenness is stumbling speech. Repeated, missed or elongated words and syllables "betray even mild intoxication" they say1. Most people also show themselves up with slow, high-pitched speech, although one in five buck these trends with lowered voices. Whether the latter group have just learned to hide their inebriation better than the rest of us is not yet clear. In other words, speech patterns are not an infallible substitute for watching how often your colleague's glass is refilled. Hollien, H., DeJong, G., Martin, C. A., Schwartz, R. & Liljegren, K. Effects of ethanol intoxication on speech suprasegmentals. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 110, 3198 - 3206, (2001). © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2001

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Language
Link ID: 1193 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Our brains excel at all kinds of things, but when neurobiologists and psychobiologists try to reverse engineer certain brain functions in order to produce a machine or system that might mimic some of the brain's extraordinary abilities, more often than not they fail (or at least engineer something that isn't half so elegant). Now, researchers funded by Dr. Harold Hawkins (Program Officer in ONR's Cognitive and Neural Sciences Division) think they're on to something. By fusing engineering techniques with neurobiology, they've been able to model mammalian brain function using biologically realistic, highly detailed models of individual brain neurons and their assemblies. They are learning how the architecture and physiological properties of cells in the brain (the primary visual cortex) integrate visual cues for target recognition. In other words, how the brain computes.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 1192 - Posted: 12.19.2001

Copyright © 2001 AP Online By NANCY ZUCKERBROD, Associated Press WASHINGTON - Health groups filed petitions with the Food and Drug Administration Tuesday urging the agency to regulate tobacco products the activists say are falsely marketed as healthier alternatives to regular cigarettes. The Supreme Court ruled last year the FDA did not have the authority to regulate tobacco products, but the health groups argue the agency can require tobacco companies that make health claims to provide scientific evidence. Copyright © 2001 Nando Media

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 1191 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA - New long-term findings demonstrate that patients with difficult to treat chronic or recurrent depression continue to respond to vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) therapy for up to two years. Results from the 60-patient long-term study, led by Mark George, MD, distinguished professor, departments of Psychiatry, Radiology and Neurology at the Medical University of South Carolina, indicate that extended treatment with VNS is associated with the elimination or reduction of depressive symptoms and an improved ability to perform daily functions. The study, conducted to determine whether the promising results seen in an acute phase (three month) pilot study were sustained after one to two years of treatment with VNS, used remission and response rates as the primary indicators of success. Response means that a patient?s depression symptoms were cut in half; remission means that a patient has become virtually symptom-free. The study found that depressed patients with VNS improved over time in terms of remission and response and also improved in their ability to function.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 1190 - Posted: 12.19.2001

By ROBERT PEAR WASHINGTON, A bid to give millions of Americans greater access to mental health care died in Congress tonight as House members rejected a Senate proposal to eliminate disparities in insurance coverage for mental and physical illnesses. The action followed 45 minutes of impassioned debate over the rights of people with mental disorders. "This is one of the most important social and civil rights issues in the United States," said Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, who had offered the proposal approved by the Senate in October. Mr. Domenici, who has a daughter with schizophrenia, and Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, whose brother has severe mental illness, pleaded with House members to outlaw the widespread limits on treatment for psychiatric disorders. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 1188 - Posted: 12.19.2001

* Alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) is one of two important alcohol metabolizing enzymes. * The ADH2*3 allele is a variant form of the gene that codes for the ADH enzyme. * ADH2*3 has been documented only in people of African descent and certain Native American tribes. * The DH2*3 allele may be associated with a lowered risk for the development of alcoholism. Many alcohol researchers believe that a person's genetic predisposition interacts with their environment to produce his or her overall risk for alcoholism. In addition, ethnic differences in rates of alcohol use and abuse have been linked to differences in the genes that code for certain enzymes that break down alcohol. Two enzymes in particular - alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) - are highly involved in alcohol metabolism. The ADH2*3 allele (a variation of the gene) has been documented to occur only in persons of African descent and certain Native American tribes. A study in the December issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research investigates if an association exists between the presence of ADH2*3 alleles in young African American adults and a family history of alcohol dependence.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 1186 - Posted: 12.19.2001

Research Offers More Evidence That Intelligence Goes Beyond Verbal Skills WASHINGTON - When we say that people "know their way around," we really mean they're smart. Now, psychologists have evidence that strong visuospatial skills and working memory may be at least as good as verbal skills and working memory as indicators of general intelligence. New research correlates visuospatial abilities, less extensively explored than verbal abilities in intelligence research, with the brain's "executive function," the central cognitive command and control that may lie at the heart of smarts. These findings appear in the December issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology - General, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). A five-psychologist research team from across the United States tested 167 participants on a variety of tasks to discern the relationships among spatial abilities (abilities to solve visuospatial problems), visuospatial working memory (an ability to temporarily store relevant visuospatial information), and executive functioning (the brain's supervisory or regulatory functions). The resulting pattern of interactions paint a clear picture.

Keyword: Intelligence; Vision
Link ID: 1185 - Posted: 12.19.2001

By MELANIE THERNSTROM A modern chronicler of hell might look to the lives of chronic-pain patients for inspiration. Theirs is a special suffering, a separate chamber, the dimensions of which materialize at the New England Medical Center pain clinic in downtown Boston. Inside the cement tower, all sights and sounds of the neighborhood -- the swans in the Public Garden, the lanterns of Chinatown -- disappear, collapsing into a small examining room in which there are only three things: the doctor, the patient and pain. Of these, as the endless daily parade of desperation and diagnoses makes evident, it is pain whose presence predominates. ''Yes, yes,'' sighs Dr. Daniel Carr, who is the clinic's medical director. ''Some of my patients are on the border of human life. Chronic pain is like water damage to a house -- if it goes on long enough, the house collapses. By the time most patients make their way to a pain clinic, it's very late.'' Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 1184 - Posted: 12.19.2001

Copyright © 2001 AP Online By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press NEW YORK - Thunder booms, a car backfires, a door slams and Christine Gillies' heart jumps. Everyday noises have caused waves of anxiety since hijackers crashed an airplane into the World Trade Center four stories above her. "It's almost like there was life before the trade center and now there's life after, like two chapters," said Gillies, who escaped with co-workers down a stairwell from the 87th floor of the north tower, her mouth covered with wet napkins as smoke began to seep in. Gillies, 27, is among those who describe themselves as "doing fine" since Sept. 11 - though most still have nightmares, and admit a loud city truck or balloon pop can make them jump to their feet. Copyright © 2001 Nando Media

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 1183 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By PHILIP J. HILTS Research on the medical uses of marijuana is scheduled to begin early next year, for the first time in nearly two decades, now that the government has approved new experiments to test whether smoking it can help patients who have multiple sclerosis or who suffer from pain in their limbs as a result of AIDS. The new approvals, granted on Nov. 28 by the Drug Enforcement Administration, do not make it legal for doctors to give their patients marijuana as treatment; they merely provide for limited use in scientific experiments. In some states, state law allows doctors to prescribe or recommend marijuana; federal law prohibits the practice, however, even in those states. The D.E.A. approved two experiments when it acted late last month, and expects to approve a third soon. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 1181 - Posted: 12.19.2001

Bruce Bower It's the most wonderful time of the year, according to a popular holiday song. Yet it's the most excruciating time for people who endure the biological tidings of discomfort and gloom that are linked to winter's arrival, according to a new study. A specific shift of the body's daily pacemaker, akin to one that regulates seasonal behavior in many mammals, underlies recurring winter depression, contend psychiatrist Thomas A. Wehr of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Md., and his coworkers. Terman, M. 2001. Internal night. Archives of General Psychiatry 58(December):1115-1116. Wehr, T.A., ... and N.E. Rosenthal. 2001. A circadian signal of change of season in patients with seasonal affective disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry 58(December):1108-1114. From Science News, Vol. 160, No. 24, Dec. 15, 2001, p. 374. Copyright ©2001 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Depression; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 1180 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Using tiny rust-containing spheres to tag cells, scientists from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere have successfully used magnetic resonance imaging to track stem cells implanted into a living animal, believed to be a first. In the December issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, the team said the neuronal stem cells take up and hold onto the spheres, which contain a compound of iron and oxygen. The iron-laden cells create a magnetic black hole easily spotted by magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, they report. "Until now, tissue had to be removed from an animal to see where stem cells were going, so this gives us an important tool," says author Jeff Bulte, Ph.D., associate professor of radiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. "Tracking stem cells non-invasively will likely be required as research advances, although human studies are still some time away."

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 1179 - Posted: 12.19.2001