Elizabeth Gibney A simple injection is now all it takes to wire up a brain. A diverse team of physicists, neuroscientists and chemists has implanted mouse brains with a rolled-up, silky mesh studded with tiny electronic devices, and shown that it unfurls to spy on and stimulate individual neurons. The implant has the potential to unravel the workings of the mammalian brain in unprecedented detail. “I think it’s great, a very creative new approach to the problem of recording from large number of neurons in the brain,” says Rafael Yuste, director of the Neuro­technology Center at Columbia University in New York, who was not involved in the work. If eventually shown to be safe, the soft mesh might even be used in humans to treat conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, says Charles Lieber, a chemist at Harvard University on Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the team. The work was published in Nature Nanotechnology on 8 June1. Neuroscientists still do not understand how the activities of individual brain cells translate to higher cognitive powers such as perception and emotion. The problem has spurred a hunt for technologies that will allow scientists to study thousands, or ideally millions, of neurons at once, but the use of brain implants is currently limited by several disadvantages. So far, even the best technologies have been composed of relatively rigid electronics that act like sandpaper on delicate neurons. They also struggle to track the same neuron over a long period, because individual cells move when an animal breathes or its heart beats. © 2015 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 21034 - Posted: 06.09.2015

by Hal Hodson Electricity is the brain's language, and now we can speak to it without wires or implants. Nanoparticles can be used to stimulate regions of the brain electrically, opening up new ways to treat brain diseases. It may even one day allow the routine exchange of data between computers and the brain. A material discovered in 2004 makes this possible. When "magnetoelectric" nanoparticles (MENs) are stimulated by an external magnetic field, they produce an electric field. If such nanoparticles are placed next to neurons, this electric field should allow them to communicate. To find out, Sakhrat Khizroev of Florida International University in Miami and his team inserted 20 billion of these nanoparticles into the brains of mice. They then switched on a magnetic field, aiming it at the clump of nanoparticles to induce an electric field. An electroencephalogram showed that the region surrounded by nanoparticles lit up, stimulated by this electric field that had been generated. "When MENs are exposed to even an extremely low frequency magnetic field, they generate their own local electric field at the same frequency," says Khizroev. "In turn, the electric field can directly couple to the electric circuitry of the neural network." Khizroev's goal is to build a system that can both image brain activity and precisely target medical treatments at the same time. Since the nanoparticles respond differently to different frequencies of magnetic field, they can be tuned to release drugs. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 21033 - Posted: 06.09.2015

Angus Chen The genetic underpinnings of psychosis are elusive and diffuse. There are hundreds of common genetic mutations scattered throughout the human genome that each bump up by just a tiny bit the risk of developing a mental illness like schizophrenia. Many people carry some set of those genes, but most don't end up with a psychotic disorder. Instead, a study suggests, they might be getting a small creative boost. Meghan, 23, began experiencing hallucinations at 19. "Driving home, cars' headlights turned into eyes. The grills on the cars turned into mouths and none of them looked happy. It would scare the crap out of me," Meghan says. Those genetic changes may persist in human DNA because they confer benefits, according Dr. Kári Stefánsson, a neurologist and CEO of a biological research company called deCODE Genetics, which conducted the study published in Nature Neuroscience Monday. "They are found in most of us, and they're common because they either confer or in the past conferred some reproductive advantage," he says. The advantage of having a more creative mind, he suggests, might help explain why these genes persist, even as they increase the risk of developing debilitating disorders, such as schizophrenia. It's an idea from the ancients. The philosopher Aristotle famously opined that genius and madness go hand in hand. Psychiatric studies have to some degree supported the adage. Studies of more than 1 million Swedish people in 2011 and 2013 found that people who had close relatives with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder were much more likely to become creative professionals. (The patients with mental illness were not themselves more creative, with the exception of some who had bipolar disorder.) What's more, studies that looked at healthy people who carry genetic markers associated with a psychotic disorder found their brains work slightly differently than others who lack those genetic markers. © 2015 NPR

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 21032 - Posted: 06.09.2015

Austin Frakt One weekend afternoon a couple of years ago, while turning a page of the book I was reading to my daughters, I fell asleep. That’s when I knew it was time to do something about my insomnia. Data, not pills, was my path to relief. Insomnia is common. About 30 percent of adults report some symptoms of it, though less than half that figure have all symptoms. Not all insomniacs are severely debilitated zombies. Consistent sleeplessness that causes some daytime problems is all it takes to be considered an insomniac. Most function quite well, and the vast majority go untreated. I was one of the high-functioning insomniacs. In fact, part of my problem was that I relished the extra time awake to work. My résumé is full of accomplishments I owe, in part, to my insomnia. But it took a toll on my mood, as well as my ability to make it through a children’s book. Insomnia is worth curing. Though causality is hard to assess, chronic insomnia is associated with greater risk of anxiety, depression, hypertension, diabetes, accidents and pain. Not surprisingly, and my own experience notwithstanding, it is also associated with lower productivity at work. Patients who are successfully treated experience improved mood, and they feel healthier, function better and have fewer symptoms of depression. Which remedy would be best for me? Lunesta, Ambien, Restoril and other drugs are promised by a barrage of ads to deliver sleep to minds that resist it. Before I reached for the pills, I looked at the data. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 21031 - Posted: 06.09.2015

The virtual reality arm appears to move faster and more accurately than the real arm Virtual reality could help stroke patients recover by "tricking" them into thinking their affected limb is more accurate than it really is. Researchers in Spain found that making the affected limb appear more effective on screen increased the chance the patient would use it in real life. This is important because stroke victims often underuse their affected limbs, making them even weaker. A stroke charity welcomed the study and called for more research. In the study of 20 stroke patients, researchers sometimes enhanced the virtual representation of the patient's affected limb, making it seem faster and more accurate, but without the patient's knowledge. After the episodes in which the limbs were made to seem more effective, the patients then went on to use them more, according to lead researcher Belen Rubio. "Surprisingly, only 10 minutes of enhancement was enough to induce significant changes in the amount of spontaneous use of the affected limb," said Mrs Rubio from the Laboratory of Synthetic, Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain. "This therapy could create a virtuous circle of recovery, in which positive feedback, spontaneous arm use and motor performance can reinforce each other. Engaging patients in this ongoing cycle of spontaneous arm use, training and learning could produce a remarkable impact on their recovery process," she said. © 2015 BBC

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 21030 - Posted: 06.09.2015

By Sandra G. Boodman The test had become something of an annual ritual. Every year beginning when he turned 45, Thomas Clark Semmes, an IT consultant for the federal government, would visit his internist for a physical. In a standard test of the sensory system that is often part of a physical, the Baltimore doctor would prick the soles of Semmes’s feet with a pin. “He’d look at me and say, ‘Tell me when you feel it,’ and I’d say ‘I will when I can,’ ” Semmes, now 56, recalled of the pinprick test. Because he never felt anything, he said nothing. “It never really concerned me very much,” he recalled. His doctor would then dutifully jot something in his chart, never exploring it further. But in 2013, nearly a decade after that first test, a quick evaluation by a podiatrist revealed the reason for his unfeeling feet and provided an explanation for an anatomical oddity in one of Semmes’s close relatives. In retrospect, Semmes wishes he had asked his internist about the lack of sensation, but he assumed it wasn’t important — otherwise, the doctor would have said something. And as Semmes would later learn, not knowing what was wrong had cost him valuable time. “I definitely wish I’d been diagnosed sooner,” he said. “There are things that could have been done to lessen the impact.” Before 2013, Semmes never had much reason to think about his feet. He knew he had hammertoes — toes that bend downward at the middle joint as a result of heredity or trauma — as well as extremely high arches, but neither condition was painful or limiting. At least, he thought, he did not have bird legs like his father, whose limbs were so storklike that they were a running family joke. “I had big, muscular legs,” Semmes said.

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 21029 - Posted: 06.09.2015

Fergus Walsh Medical correspondent Scientists in Austria have created an artificial leg which allows the amputee to feel lifelike sensations from their foot. The recipient, Wolfang Rangger, who lost his right leg in 2007, said: "It feels like I have a foot again. It's like a second lease of life." Prof Hubert Egger of the University of Linz, said sensors fitted to the sole of the artificial foot, stimulated nerves at the base of the stump. He added it was the first time that a leg amputee had been fitted with a sensory-enhanced prosthesis. How it works Surgeons first rewired nerve endings in the patient's stump to place them close to the skin surface. Six sensors were fitted to the base of the foot, to measure the pressure of heel, toe and foot movement. These signals were relayed to a micro-controller which relayed them to stimulators inside the shaft where it touched the base of the stump. These vibrated, stimulating the nerve endings under the skin, which relayed the signals to the brain. Prof Egger said: "The sensors tell the brain there is a foot and the wearer has the impression that it rolls off the ground when he walks." Wolfgang Ranger, a former teacher, who lost his leg after a blood clot caused by a stroke, has been testing the device for six months, both in the lab and at home. He says it has given him a new lease of life He said: "I no longer slip on ice and I can tell whether I walk on gravel, concrete, grass or sand. I can even feel small stones." © 2015 BBC.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Robotics
Link ID: 21028 - Posted: 06.09.2015

James Gorman When researchers found a group of brain cells in the fruit fly that function like a compass, they were very satisfied. They had found what they were looking for. But, said Vivek Jayaraman, when he and Johannes D. Seelig realized that the cells were actually arranged in a physical circle in the brain, so they looked just like a compass, they were taken aback. “It’s kind of like a cosmic joke that they are arranged like that,” he said. Dr. Jayaraman was investigating a kind of navigation called dead reckoning, or, in technical terms, angular path integration. It is the most basic way a moving creature knows where it is and where it is going. In dead reckoning, animals use visual cues, like landmarks, and also a sense of where their bodies are pointed. It is very different from other ways animals navigate, such as the use of polarized light from the sun or sensitivity to the earth’s magnetic field. The researchers published their findings in Nature last month. Dr. Jayaraman had narrowed down the likely location of directional tracking based on other research. So he expected to find activity in the ellipsoid body, a very small region of a very small brain. Dr. Jayaraman and Mr. Seelig, at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia, engineered neurons there to light up when they were active, and they recorded the activity with a microscopic technique called two-photon calcium imaging that gives a real-time visual picture of the brain in action in a living animal. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 21027 - Posted: 06.08.2015

By SABRINA TAVERNISE WASHINGTON — The global diabetes rate has risen by nearly half over the past two decades, according to a new study, as obesity and the health problems it spawns have taken hold across the developing world. The prevalence of diabetes has been rising in rich countries for several decades, largely driven by increases in the rate of obesity. More recently, poorer countries have begun to follow the trend, with major increases in countries like China, Mexico and India. The study, published Monday in the British medical journal The Lancet, reported a 45 percent rise in the prevalence of diabetes worldwide from 1990 to 2013. Nearly all the rise was in Type 2, which is usually related to obesity and is the most common form of the disease. A major shift is underway in the developing world, in which deaths from communicable diseases like malaria and tuberculosis have declined sharply, and chronic diseases like cancer and diabetes are on the rise. The pattern is linked to economic improvement and more people living longer, but it has left governments in developing countries scrambling to deal with new and often more expensive ways to treat illnesses. The study, led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a research group, was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It is the largest analysis of global disability data to date, drawing on more than 35,000 data sources in 188 countries. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 21026 - Posted: 06.08.2015

By Sue Bailey, The Canadian Press Scientific studies increasingly suggest marijuana may not be the risk-free high that teens — and sometimes their parents — think it is, researchers say. Yet pot is still widely perceived by young smokers as relatively harmless, said Dr. Romina Mizrahi, director of the Focus on Youth Psychosis Prevention clinic and research program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. She cites a growing body of research that warns of significantly higher incidence of hallucinations, paranoia and the triggering of psychotic illness in adolescent users who are most predisposed. "When you look at the studies in general, you can safely say that in those that are vulnerable, it doubles the risk." Such fallout is increasingly evident in the 19-bed crisis monitoring unit at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa. "I see more and more cases of substance-induced psychosis," said Dr. Sinthu Suntharalingam, a child and adolescent psychiatrist. "The most common substance that's abused is cannabis." One or two cases a week are now arriving on average. "They will present with active hallucinations," Suntharalingam said. "Parents will be very scared. They don't know what's going on. "They'll be seeing things, hearing things, sometimes they will try to self-harm or go after other people." Potential effects need to be better understood She and Mizrahi, an associate professor in psychiatry at University of Toronto, are among other front-line professionals who say more must be done to help kids understand potential effects. "They know the hard drugs, what they can do," Suntharalingam said. "Acid, they'll tell us it can cause all these things so they stay away from it. But marijuana? They'll be: 'Oh, everybody does it."' Mizrahi said the message isn't getting through. ©2015 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 21025 - Posted: 06.08.2015

By Brian Handwerk When it comes to mating, female mice must follow their noses. For the first time, scientists have shown that hormones in mice hijack smell receptors in the nose to drive behavior, while leaving the brain completely out of the loop. According to the study, appearing this week in Cell, female mice can smell attractant male pheromones during their reproductive periods. But during periods of diestrus, when the animals are unable to reproduce, the hormone progesterone prompts nasal sensory cells to block male pheromone signals so that they don't reach a female's brain. During this time, female mice display indifference or even hostility toward males. The same sensors functioned normally with regard to other smells, like cat urine, showing they are selective for male pheromones. When ovulation begins, progesterone levels drop, enabling the females to once more smell male pheromones. In short, the system "blinds" female mice to potential mates when the animals are not in estrus. The finding that the olfactory system usurped the brain's role shocked the research team, says lead author Lisa Stowers of the Scripps Research Institute. “The sensory systems are just supposed to sort of suck up everything they can in the environment and pass it all on to the brain. The result just seems wacky to us,” Stowers says. “Imagine this occurring in your visual system," she adds. "If you just ate a big hamburger and then saw a buffet, you might see things like the table and some people and maybe some fruit—but you simply wouldn't see the hamburgers anymore. That's kind of what happens here. Based on this female's internal-state change, she's missing an entire subset of the cues being passed on to her brain.”

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 21024 - Posted: 06.06.2015

By Lisa Sanders On Thursday, we challenged Well readers to figure out why a previously healthy 31-year-old woman suddenly began having strokes. I thought this was a particularly tough case – all the more so since I had never heard of the disease she was ultimately diagnosed with. Apparently I was not alone. Only a few dozen of the 400 plus readers who wrote in were able to make this difficult diagnosis. The correct diagnosis is: Susac’s syndrome The first person to identify this rare neurological disorder was Errol Levine, a retired radiologist from South Africa, now living in Santa Fe, N.M. The location of the stroke shown — in a part of the brain known as the corpus callosum — was a subtle clue, and Dr. Levine recalled reading of an autoimmune disease characterized by strokes in this unusual area of the brain. This is Dr. Levine’s second win. Well done, sir! Susac’s syndrome is a rare disorder first described in 1979 by Dr. John Susac, a neurologist in Winter Haven, Fla. Dr. Susac described two women, one 26 years old, the other 40, who he encountered within weeks of one another. Both had the same unusual triad of psychiatric symptoms suggestive of some type of brain inflammation, hearing loss, and patchy vision loss caused by blockages of the tiniest vessels of the retina known as branch retinal arteries. A few years later, Dr. Susac encountered two more cases and presented one of these at a meeting as a mystery diagnosis. The doctor who figured it out called the disorder Susac’s syndrome, and the name stuck. Seen primarily in young women, Susac’s is thought to be an autoimmune disorder in which antibodies, the foot soldiers of the immune system, mistakenly attack tissues in some of the smallest arteries in the brain. The inflammation of these small vessels blocks the flow of blood, causing tiny strokes. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 21023 - Posted: 06.06.2015

by Helen Thomson For the first time, scientists have discovered a mechanism in humans that could explain how your lifestyle choices may impact your children and grandchildren's genes. Mounting evidence suggests that environmental factors such as smoking, diet and stress, can leave their mark on the genes of your children and grandchildren. For example, girls born to Dutch women who were pregnant during a long famine at the end of the second world war had twice the usual risk of developing schizophrenia. Likewise, male mice that experience early life stress give rise to two generations of offspring that have increased depression and anxiety, despite being raised in a caring environment. This has puzzled many geneticists, as genetic information contained in sperm and eggs is not supposed to be affected by the environment, a principle called the August Weismann barrier. But we also know the activity of our own genes can be changed by our environment, through epigenetic mechanisms . These normally work by turning a gene on or off by adding or subtracting a methyl group to or from its DNA. These methyl groups can inactivate genes by making their DNA curl up, so that enzymes can no longer access the gene and read its instructions. Such epigenetic mechanisms are high on the list of suspects when it comes to explaining how environmental factors that affect parents can later influence their children, such as in the Dutch second world war study, but just how these epigenetic changes might be passed on to future generations is a mystery. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Epigenetics; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 21022 - Posted: 06.06.2015

Steve Connor Scientists have linked the condition with variations in the DNA of genes known to be involved in stimulating or inhibiting the passing of chemical messages across the tiny gaps or “synapses” between nerve cells in the brain. They said the findings are part of a wider body of evidence pointing to the genetic causes of schizophrenia which is known to have a strong inherited component as well as being influenced by a person’s environment and upbringing. “We’re finally starting to understand what goes wrong in schizophrenia. Our study marks a significant step towards understanding the biology underpinning schizophrenia, which is an incredible complex condition and has up until very recently kept scientists largely mystified as to is origins,” said Andrew Pocklington of Cardiff University. “We now have what we hope is a pretty sizeable piece of the jigsaw puzzle that will help us to develop a coherent model of the disease, while helping us to rule out some of the alternatives,” said Dr Pocklington, the lead author of the study published in the journal Neuron. “A reliable model of disease is urgently needed to direct future efforts in developing new treatments, which haven’t really improved a great deal since the 1970s,” he said. © independent.co.uk

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 21021 - Posted: 06.06.2015

by Clare Wilson The first drug for treating low sexual desire in women looks set to go on sale in the US next year Flibanserin, sometimes called the female Viagra, was approved by 18 votes to 6 by a US Food and Drug Administration advisory panel yesterday, although some of the committee members had doubts about the drug's risks and benefits. They required that certain "risk-management options" be put in place, on top of the usual list of side effects listed in the medicine's patient information leaflet. We have yet to hear what this means, but options include doctors having to verbally warn women not to drink alcohol or use various other medicines when taking the drug. The FDA's final say is due by August, but it usually follows the decision of its advisory panel. Assuming it gets the go-ahead, manufacturer Sprout Pharmaceuticals of Raleigh, North Carolina, plans to give the drug the brand-name Addyi, and has promised not to advertise the product directly to patients – which is normally allowed in the US – for the first 18 months it goes on sale. Addyi is no Viagra though – women would have to take it every day, whether or not they want sex. And, while the famous little blue pill works by increasing blood flow to the genitals, this new drug instead alters brain chemistry, affecting receptors for various signalling chemicals including serotonin and dopamine. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 21020 - Posted: 06.06.2015

Anthony Kulkamp Dias, a 33-year old Brazilian bank worker, performed a Beatles classic for the team of surgeons operating on his brain tumour. The video shot by one of the medical team shows Dias horizontal, strumming on a guitar and singing the Beatles’ iconic song ‘ Yesterday’. The lyrics, “yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away…” had added pertinence considering the unique situation Dias found himself in. There was a medical explanation behind the impromptu singsong with doctors keeping Dias awake in order to conduct ‘cerebral monitoring’, which a spokesperson reportedly said is “important to prevent injuries that occur in the sensory, motor and speech areas of the brain.” Through his performance, Dias was able to provide real-time feedback about how the surgery was affecting his brain. © independent.co.uk

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 21019 - Posted: 06.06.2015

By Rachael Rettner and LiveScience Mathematician John Nash, who died May 23 in a car accident, was known for his decades-long battle with schizophrenia—a struggle famously depicted in the 2001 Oscar-winning film "A Beautiful Mind." Nash had apparently recovered from the disease later in life, which he said was done without medication. But how often do people recover from schizophrenia, and how does such a destructive disease disappear? Nash developed symptoms of schizophrenia in the late 1950s, when he was around age 30, after he made groundbreaking contributions to the field of mathematics, including the extension of game theory, or the math of decision making. He began to exhibit bizarre behavior and experience paranoia and delusions, according to The New York Times. Over the next several decades, he was hospitalized several times, and was on and off anti-psychotic medications. But in the 1980s, when Nash was in his 50s, his condition began to improve. In an email to a colleague in the mid-1990s, Nash said, "I emerged from irrational thinking, ultimately, without medicine other than the natural hormonal changes of aging," according to The New York Times. Nash and his wife Alicia died, at ages 86 and 82, respectively, in a crash on the New Jersey Turnpike while en route home from a trip on which Nash had received a prestigious award for his work. © 2015 Scientific American

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 21018 - Posted: 06.06.2015

How echolocation really works By Dwayne Godwin and Jorge Cham © 2015 Scientific American

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 21017 - Posted: 06.06.2015

James Gorman Chimpanzees have the cognitive ability to cook, according to new research, if only someone would give them ovens. It’s not that the animals are ready to go head-to-head with Gordon Ramsay, but scientists from Harvard and Yale found that chimps have the patience and foresight to resist eating raw food and to place it in a device meant to appear, at least to the chimps, to cook it. That is no small achievement. In a line that could easily apply to human beings, the researchers write, “Many primate species, including chimpanzees, have difficulty giving up food already in their possession and show limitations in their self-control when faced with food.” But they found that chimps would give up a raw slice of sweet potato in the hand for the prospect of a cooked slice of sweet potato a bit later. That kind of foresight and self-control is something any cook who has eaten too much raw cookie dough can admire. The research grew out of the idea that cooking itself may have driven changes in human evolution, a hypothesis put forth by Richard Wrangham, an anthropologist at Harvard and several colleagues about 15 years ago in an article in Current Anthropology, and more recently in his book, “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.” He argued that cooking may have begun something like two million years ago, even though hard evidence only dates back about one million years. For that to be true, some early ancestors, perhaps not much more advanced than chimps, had to grasp the whole concept of transforming the raw into the cooked. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 21016 - Posted: 06.03.2015

By Elahe Izadi Researchers classified two new species of Dusky Antechinus, mouse-like creatures that engage in suicidal reproduction, and published their findings last week in the peer-reviewed journal Memoirs of the Queensland Museum -- Nature. The Mainland Dusky Antechinus, found in southeastern Australia, has been elevated from sub-species to a distinct species. And the newly discovered Tasman Peninsula Dusky Antechinus, found in southeastern Tasmania, already faces the threat of extinction due in part to loss of habitat and feral pests, researchers said. Their proclivity for ferocious, suicidal sex frenzies aren't helping them any. "The breeding period is basically two to three weeks of speed-mating, with testosterone-fueled males coupling with as many females as possible, for up to 14 hours at a time," lead author Andrew Baker of the Queensland University of Technology said in a release. All of that testosterone "triggers a malfunction in the stress hormone shut-off switch" for the males, Baker said. The males then get so stressed out that their immune systems fail, and they die before the females actually give birth. Suicidal reproduction -- or semelparity-- is rare in mammals, and has so far just been documented in these kinds of marsupials.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 21015 - Posted: 06.03.2015