Alison Motluk The Bible may contain the oldest recorded case of temporal lobe epilepsy. Ezekiel, the prophet whose visions are recorded in a book of the Old Testament, apparently had all the classic signs of the condition. Earlier in 2001, Eric Altschuler, a neuroscientist at the University of California at San Diego, claimed that the Biblical strongman Samson may have been the earliest known sufferer of antisocial personality disorder. Now he says that records in the Bible reveal that Ezekiel, who lived about 2600 years ago, showed extreme classic symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy.

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 989 - Posted: 11.15.2001

Scientists at Johns Hopkins Children's Center and six other research centers have found that mothers who have had a herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) infection at the time of birth are more likely to give birth to children who develop schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders. HSV-2 is a sexually transmitted disease that differs from its common, cold sore-causing cousin, HSV-1. Based on stored blood samples and medical records dating as far back as the late 1950s, the correlative study in this month's Archives of General Psychiatry is the first to compare direct laboratory evidence of specific maternal infections with the development of psychosis in children.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 985 - Posted: 11.14.2001

But the Connection Between the Two Still Needs to Be Worked Out By Liza Jane Maltin WebMD Medical News -- In the first large-scale study of its kind, researchers from several U.S. centers have found an as-yet-unexplained connection between herpes simplex 2 -- the virus that causes genital herpes -- and schizophrenia. Babies born to women infected with the virus, commonly called HSV-2, appear to have a greater risk of developing the brain condition that causes an impaired perception of reality. The team examined records and blood samples from more than 3,000 women who gave birth in Providence, R.I., between 1959 and 1966, and their offspring. From the review, the researchers found that 27 of the otherwise-healthy babies eventually developed schizophrenia or a related psychotic condition. On closer inspection, they found that many of these babies were born to mothers who had genital herpes. © 2001 WebMD Corporation. All rights reserved. © 1996-2001 WebMD Corporation. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 984 - Posted: 11.14.2001

Copyright © 2001 AP Online By SETH HETTENA, Associated Press SAN DIEGO - Studies exploring the effects of specific foods on the brains of animals found that diets rich in spinach and blueberries may help stave off age-related declines in the mental abilities of rats. Rats fed a diet rich in spinach reversed a normal loss of learning that occurs with age, according to a study by researchers at the University of South Florida. The study was presented at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in San Diego this week. Rats fed a normal diet that contained 2 percent freeze-dried spinach learned to associate the sound of a tone with an oncoming puff of air faster than those fed regular rat chow, the study found. The test measured the interval between the sound of the tone and when the rats blinked. Copyright © 2001 Nando Media

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 982 - Posted: 11.14.2001

Emma Young, San Diego A controversial fetal cell experiment produced "devastating" results in five patients because some replacement cells were transplanted into areas that did not need them, according to the researchers who ran the experiment. Fetal cells were transplanted into the brains of 20 Parkinson's disease sufferers. In five, this caused an over-production of dopamine and excessive jerky movements characteristic of the disease itself. The initial results of the study, led by Curt Freed of Columbia University, New York were published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier in 2001. At the time, Paul Greene, another of the researchers, described the side-effects in the five patients as "absolutely devastating".

Keyword: Parkinsons; Stem Cells
Link ID: 981 - Posted: 11.14.2001

SAN DIEGO -- Scientists at the University at Buffalo have shown that the drug methylphenidate, the generic form of Ritalin, which physicians have considered to have only short-term effects, appears to initiate changes in brain function that remain after the therapeutic effects have dissipated. The changes appear to be similar to those that occur with other stimulant drugs such as amphetamine and cocaine, said Joan Baizer, Ph.D., UB professor of physiology and biophysics and senior author of the study.

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 978 - Posted: 11.12.2001

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have found that telling a lie and telling the truth require different activities in the human brain. The findings will be presented Tuesday, Nov. 13, at the national meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego, CA. By identifying the brain activity associated with deception and denial, the work paves the way for improvements in lie-detection techniques. It may also contribute to the field of psychotherapy by advancing understanding of what happens to the brain during the those psychological processes, said Daniel Langleben, MD, leader of the study and assistant professor in Penn's Department of Psychiatry.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 977 - Posted: 11.12.2001

HELEN PEARSON Greasy sausage roll or juicy apple? Our choice of snacks cannot be explained by a taste for fat, nutrition researchers now suggest. By hunting down the genetic secrets of the skinny, they hope to help those prone to piling on the pounds. Some lucky people munch chips and chocolate and never gain an ounce. Their choice of diet is not down to fondness for fatty flavours, say appetite researchers John Blundell and John Cooling of the University of Leeds.1 1.Cooling, J. & Blundell, J. E. High-fat and low-fat phenotypes: habitual eating of high- and low-fat foods not related to taste preference for fat. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 55, 1016 - 1021, (2001). © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2001

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 976 - Posted: 11.12.2001

Ritalin is a controversial drug A study which suggests the controversial drug Ritalin could cause long-term brain changes has been attacked. The drug is prescribed to children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). While many parents say it has been extraordinarily successful, others have compared the drug to a "chemical cosh". Scientists found that rats given large doses of Ritalin suffered subtle neuronal changes. They said these were comparable to the effects of other stimulant drugs such as amphetamines and cocaine. However a UK expert who strongly advocates Ritalin use said the study was deeply flawed. (c) BBC

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 975 - Posted: 11.12.2001

Changes appear similar to those caused by amphetamine The stimulant Ritalin, a drug used to help children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, may cause long-term changes in the brain, researchers reported on Sunday. THE CHANGES LOOK similar to those seen with other stimulants such as amphetamine and cocaine, at least in rats, the team at the University of Buffalo found. "Clinicians consider Ritalin to be short-acting," Joan Baizer, a professor of physiology and biophysics who led the study said in a statement. • MSNBC Terms and Conditions © 2001

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 974 - Posted: 11.12.2001

By Lisa Liddane The Orange County Register It's a volcano waiting to erupt in the brain. When an aneurysm ruptures, it can result in brain damage, coma or death. It landed actress Sharon Stone in a hospital last month. A 20-year-old woman died of a ruptured brain aneurysm after riding Montezooma's Revenge roller coaster two months ago at Knott's Berry Farm in California. In March 2000, Eric Samaniego, a critical-care nurse from Yorba Linda, Calif., had a tremendous headache - something he had never experienced. "My vision started getting blurry, and I started to lose my balance." As a nurse, he knew something was terribly wrong. His wife called 911. Samaniego remembers little about the month after he arrived in the emergency room. He was told the aneurysm was corrected through a series of operations. But the rehabilitation and recovery were tough. Copyright © 2001 The Seattle Times Company

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 973 - Posted: 11.12.2001

Bruce Bower Although people effortlessly remember all sorts of everyday events, scientists are struggling to explain how the brain makes this possible. In two critical brain areas, such memory may hinge more on the timing than on the strength of neural activity, according to a team of neuroscientists. As volunteers study word lists, clusters of neurons in the rhinal cortex and the hippocampus-adjacent brain areas already implicated in memory-fire synchronized electrical bursts that pave the way for remembering those words later, argue Jürgen Fell of the University of Bonn in Germany and his colleagues. From Science News, Vol. 160, No. 19, Nov. 10, 2001, p. 294. Copyright ©2001 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 970 - Posted: 11.12.2001

Expecting a spike in cases after Sept. 11, researchers puzzle out the biology of the disorder By Douglas Steinberg Thousands of cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will likely emerge from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Many cases will last a few months, but severely traumatized witnesses could suffer for the rest of their lives. How can a single horrific experience with nasty aftershocks sear the psyche for decades? Answers to this question appear increasingly urgent in an atmosphere of war, anthrax scares, and continual television replays of the World Trade Center collapse. Researchers have linked PTSD to changes in the brain and body. But association is not causation, and biologists hotly contest the significance of these changes. Inconsistent findings fuel the debate, and the ethical limitations of psychiatric research, combined with a lack of animal models, might make some issues impossible to resolve. The stakes in these scientific disputes are high: greater consensus could channel resources into better prevention and treatment strategies. The Scientist 15[22]:1, Nov. 12, 2001 © Copyright 2001, The Scientist, Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 969 - Posted: 11.12.2001

Cholesterol is secreted by cells in the brain Cholesterol plays a crucial role in making sure that the brain works properly. The compound is notorious for clogging up the arteries, leading to heart disease and stroke. But scientists have found that it stimulates the nerve cells of the brain to make the connections that are essential to learning and memory. The brain does not obtain cholesterol from the blood. The molecules are too big to pass across the blood-brain barrier which provides a frontline defence against toxic substances. (c) BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 967 - Posted: 11.09.2001

Nerve cells need cholesterol to establish contacts / New perspectives for the treatment of brain lesions A previously unknown role of cholesterol in the formation of contacts between nerve cells has been discovered by researchers at the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany, and at the Centre de Neurochimie in Strasbourg in France (Science, November 09th, 2001). Their results suggest a link between brain cholesterol metabolism and nerve cell development, learning and memory and hint at new strategies to cure injury- or disease-induced brain lesions. Brain function depends on the exchange of electrical signals between nerve cells that is mediated by highly specialized contact sites, the socalled synapses. Their formation is a decisive phase during brain development and plays an important role in learning and memory. So far, however, the mechanisms of this process are largely obscure and thus, their elucidation is therefore an important topic of neuroscience research. Moreover, the identification of "synaptogenic" factors is a fundamental prerequisite to repair synaptic connections that have been destroyed by injury, stroke or neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 966 - Posted: 11.09.2001

Copyright © 2001 Christian Science Monitor Service By LORI VALIGRA, Christian Science Monitor. - It's an underwater nightclub scene that could drown out the overtures of even the most virtuosic terrestrial Romeo. To the human ear, the relentless rat-a-tat-tat of the male cusk eel and the hours-long humming of the midshipman fish may sound like downtown street noise. But to potential mates, these underwater troubadours are the piscine versions of Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra, crooning love songs in the moonlight. Although whale song has long been documented in ships' logs, it wasn't until World War II that scientists and the military first noticed the sounds of fish and the snapping of crustaceans. So far, more than 700 species of saltwater and freshwater fish throughout the world are known to vocalize, but scientists say the total number is likely much higher. Most of the time, the sounds come from male fish during mating. Copyright © 2001 Nando Media

Keyword: Animal Communication; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 964 - Posted: 11.09.2001

Viewing attractive female faces activates the brain's reward circuits in males From ancient mythology to modern advertising, the face of a beautiful woman has been regarded as a powerful motivator of men's behavior. Now a group of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has shown that, while heterosexual men recognize attractiveness in both female and male faces, they will expend effort to increase their viewing of attractive female faces only. The research also shows that areas of the brain previously identified as responding to such rewards as food, drugs and money also respond to facial beauty. The study appears in the November 8 issue of Neuron. "Our group has been studying the physiological mechanisms that underlie a variety of motivated behaviors," says Hans Breiter, MD, of the Motivation and Emotion Neuroscience Center in the MGH Department of Radiology, the paper's author and leader of the research team. "While many neuroscientists have been studying the visual processing of faces, we wanted to find out if watching beautiful faces can itself be rewarding and can activate the brain's motivation centers." To answer these questions, the researchers conducted three experiments with groups of young, heterosexual men. (Men were chosen as study subjects because other recent research has shown that women's response to facial stimuli can change during their menstrual cycles.) Each experiment utilized a series of 80 photographs of faces that fell into four standard categories: beautiful females, average females, beautiful males, and average males.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Brain imaging
Link ID: 963 - Posted: 11.09.2001

In the November 1, 2001 issue, the Journal of Neuroscience inaugurated a new series of critical minireviews called "New Directions in Neuroscience," meant to help readers stay in touch with new methods and new fields of research (Shepherd, 2001). The first set of minireviews is entitled "Genomics and Proteomics," and three of the five reviews treat topics relevant to biological psychology.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Newsletter
Link ID: 962 - Posted: 11.09.2001

For almost thirty years there have been two competing hypotheses about how synaptic vesicles discharge transmitter molecules into the synapse and then are recycled for further activity. Recent experiments and reviews indicate that both hypotheses are correct, each applying to a different pool of vesicles within the presynaptic terminal (Richards, Guatimosin, and Betz, 2000; Wilkinson and Cole, 2001).

Keyword: Miscellaneous; Newsletter
Link ID: 961 - Posted: 11.09.2001

Schizophrenia typically has its onset in late adolescence or early adulthood, but cases that occur in childhood or early adolescence appear to be clinically and neurobiologically similar to later-onset illness. Early-onset schizophrenia may offer special opportunities to study how the disease develops and may help to discover its causes. For this reason, a team of neuroscientists (Thompson et al., 2001) used MRI to map, over a five-year period, the brains of 12 patients, 6 male and 6 female, with childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS), and a parallel group of 12 healthy adolescents. A third group of subjects were controls for medication; these were 10 non-schizophrenic adolescents who exhibited chronic mood disturbance and lack of behavioral control for which they were being treated with the same medications as the COS patients. MRI scans were first taken when the subjects were about 13.5 years old, then again about 2.5 years later, and finally about 5 years after the first scans.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Newsletter
Link ID: 960 - Posted: 11.09.2001