Researchers in the U.S. have found signs of puberty in American boys up to two years earlier than previously reported — age nine on average for blacks, 10 for whites and Hispanics. Other studies have suggested that girls, too, are entering puberty younger. Why is this happening? Theories range from higher levels of obesity and inactivity to chemicals in food and water, all of which might interfere with normal hormone production. But those are just theories, and they remain unproven. Doctors say earlier puberty is not necessarily cause for concern. And some experts question whether the trend is even real. Boys are more likely than girls to have an underlying physical cause for early puberty.Boys are more likely than girls to have an underlying physical cause for early puberty. (Jennifer DeMonte/Associated Press) Dr. William Adelman, an adolescent medicine specialist in the Baltimore area, says the new research is the first to find early, strong physical evidence that boys are maturing earlier. But he added that the study still isn't proof and said it raises a lot of questions. Earlier research based on 20-year-old national data also suggested a trend toward early puberty in boys, but it was based on less rigorous information. The new study involved testes measurements in more than 4,000 boys. Enlargement of testes is generally the earliest sign of puberty in boys. The study was published online Saturday in Pediatrics to coincide with the American Academy of Pediatrics' national conference in New Orleans. © CBC 2012

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 17401 - Posted: 10.22.2012

By JANE E. BRODY I recently met a slender, health-conscious young woman who insisted that the size of sugar-sweetened drinks should not be legislated. “Getting people to drink less of them should be done through education,” she said. It is an opinion shared by many others. Some may be unaware of the role that these beverages are playing in the nation’s burgeoning epidemics of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Few know the disappointing history of efforts to change human behavior solely through education. The young woman was reacting to a New York City regulation, to take effect on March 12, limiting to 16 ounces the size of sugar-sweetened soft drinks available for purchase at restaurants, street carts, movie theaters and sporting events. The Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the new home of the Nets, has already imposed this limit. Convenience stores, vending machines and some newsstands are exempted from the regulation. Several new studies underscore the public health potential of the restriction. If it succeeds in curbing the consumption of sweet liquid calories, it is likely to be copied elsewhere, because the nation’s love affair with super-size sugary soft drinks is costing cities and states billions of dollars annually in medical care. We are all born with a natural preference for sweetness, which through evolution enabled us to know when fruits and berries were ripe and ready to eat. But as Gary K. Beauchamp, a biopsychologist and director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, has put it, “We’ve separated the good taste from the good food.” Our sweet tooth is no longer working to our advantage. Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 17400 - Posted: 10.22.2012

By Gary Stix Oliver Sacks, HBO and others have chronicled the life of autistic savant Temple Grandin. The unique patterns of thought produced by Grandin’s brain enabled her to design now-ubiquitous methods to treat cattle more humanely, and she has served as inspiration to others diagnosed with the condition. Until now, no one has tried to assess the actual brain physiology of the professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University. Grandin herself wanted to know more about the biological basis of her cognitive strengths and deficits. So she entered into a collaboration with the University of Utah, which performed a battery of imaging tests—MRI, DTI and fMRI—to determine brain volume, cortical thickness and the structure of the insulating white matter that surrounds the long, wire-like axons that connect one brain cell with another. Supplemented with neuropsychological testing, researchers compared these results with those from three other “neurotypical” female subjects of about the same age. It turns out that Grandin’s brain appears to be similar to that of other autistic savants. She has greater volume in the right hemisphere, which might account for her superior visuospatial abilities. She also has increased thickness of the entorhinal cortex, an area involved with memory As with others with autism, she has an overall larger brain size. And the enlarged amygdala and the smaller cortical thickness in the fusiform gyrus may relate to the deficits autistic individuals experience in dealing with emotion and reading faces. “There’s this idea in the savant literature that left hemisphere damage occurs during development and the right hemisphere compensates in some way,” says Jason Cooperrider, a graduate student at the University of Utah who presented the findings at the conference. “All of the savant skills are right hemisphere-dominant abilities, which would include Dr. Grandin’s exceptional visual and spatial ability which would be considered savant level.” © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 17399 - Posted: 10.22.2012

Young people who sustain brain injuries are more likely to commit crimes and end up in prison, research suggests. The University of Exeter study says such injuries can lead maturing brains to "misfire", affecting judgement and the ability to control impulses. It calls for greater monitoring and treatment to prevent later problems. The findings echo a separate report by the Children's Commissioner for England on the impact of injuries on maturing brains and the social consequences. In the report, Repairing Shattered Lives, Professor Huw Williams from the University of Exeter's Centre for Clinical Neuropsychology Research, describes traumatic brain injury as a "silent epidemic". It is said to occur most frequently among children and young people who have fallen over or been playing sport, as well as those involved in fights or road accidents. The consequences can include loss of memory, with the report citing international research which indicates the level of brain injuries among offenders is much higher than in the general population. A survey of 200 adult male prisoners in Britain found 60% claimed to have suffered a head injury, it notes. The report acknowledges there may be underlying risk factors for brain injury and offending behaviour but says improving treatment and introducing screening for young offenders would deliver significant benefits in terms of reducing crime and saving public money. BBC © 2012

Keyword: Aggression; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 17398 - Posted: 10.20.2012

Results of a new study presented at Neuroscience 2012, the annual meeting of the Society of Neuroscience, has suggested the right hemisphere of the brain performs important tasks during its resting state, implying different end results for left-handed people and right-handed people, who use the right and left sides of their brains differently. Findings showed that when resting, the right hemisphere of the brain communicates more with itself and the left side of the brain, than when the left hemisphere talks to itself and communicates to the right side of the brain, regardless of participants' dominant hand. Neuroscientists did note that right-handed people used their left hemisphere at a higher rate, and vice versa. The authors of this study say that during rest, the right hemisphere is "doing important things, we don't yet understand." The activities that are being processed by the right hemisphere could be storing and processing acquired information, daydreaming, or similar creative tasks. Andrei Medvedev, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Center for Functional and Molecular Imaging at Georgetown explains: The researchers had 15 participants connect to near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) equipment. This inexpensive and moveable technology uses light to calculate changes in oxygenated hemoglobin inside the body. Participants wore a hat that contained optical fibers delivering infrared light to the outermost layers of the brain and then assessed the light that bounced back. Through this method, the device could see which parts of the brain are active and communicate at the highest rate, based on heightened use of oxygen in the blood and elevated simultaneous occurrence of their activities.

Keyword: Sleep; Laterality
Link ID: 17397 - Posted: 10.20.2012

Mo Costandi Scientists have learned how to discover what you are dreaming about while you sleep. A team of researchers led by Yukiyasu Kamitani of the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, used functional neuroimaging to scan the brains of three people as they slept, simultaneously recording their brain waves using electroencephalography (EEG). The researchers woke the participants whenever they detected the pattern of brain waves associated with sleep onset, asked them what they had just dreamed about, and then asked them to go back to sleep. This was done in three-hour blocks, and repeated between seven and ten times, on different days, for each participant. During each block, participants were woken up ten times per hour. Each volunteer reported having visual dreams six or seven times every hour, giving the researchers a total of around 200 dream reports. Most of the dreams reflected everyday experiences, but some contained unusual content, such as talking to a famous actor. The researchers extracted key words from the participants’ verbal reports, and picked 20 categories — such as 'car', 'male', 'female', and 'computer' — that appeared most frequently in their dream reports. Kamitani and his colleagues then selected photos representing each category, scanned the participants’ brains again while they viewed the images, and compared brain activity patterns with those recorded just before the participants were woken up. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Sleep; Brain imaging
Link ID: 17396 - Posted: 10.20.2012

Mo Costandi A disturbed night's sleep might signal a future diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, according to findings presented this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans, Louisiana. Patients with Alzheimer’s often complain of changes in their sleep patterns during the early stages of the disease. In healthy people, for example, daytime naps usually last around 20 minutes, but they can be to 3 hours long in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Roxanne Sterniczuk, a neurophysiologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, and her colleagues wanted to determine how early these changes occur and if they could predict a person’s future risk of developing the disease. Sterniczuk and her colleagues analysed data from around 14,600 healthy people, collected as part of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), a long-term observational study of people aged 50 and over from 12 European countries. They looked at various measures of sleep quality, and used them to produce a ‘sleep disturbance index’. The researchers found that participants who reported sleeping restlessly, feeling tired during the day and taking sleep medication were more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s within the next 2 years, and that the greater the extent of these problems, the more severe were the symptoms of the subsequent disease. “Increased daytime sleepiness was the biggest predictor,” says Sterniczuk. “It would appear that subtle changes in the sleep–wake cycle are taking place before any disease pathology.” © 2012 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Alzheimers; Sleep
Link ID: 17395 - Posted: 10.20.2012

Elizabeth Lopatto , Bloomberg News Three studies set to explore the use of experimental drugs that may become the first to change the course of Alzheimer's disease aren't looking to cure the illness. Their goal is to prevent it altogether. The independent trials will begin in 2013 and run for three to five years, testing as many as five drugs in almost 1,500 volunteers who haven't shown any of Alzheimer's mind-altering symptoms, yet carry a strong genetic risk for the disease or display early physical evidence in the brain. A decision on the final study drug is expected in December. The newest strategy abandons a drive that failed to stop Alzheimer's once memories recede. Instead, as with heart disease, scientists are exploring if the mind-robbing ailment can be prevented or at least delayed using drugs that act roughly like Pfizer's Lipitor and other statins. The idea, driven by new information that tracks the disease's progression back through time, is to act years before symptoms occur to rid the brain of proteins that can later destroy nerve cells. "We now can see changes 10 to 15 years before symptoms develop," said Neil Buckholtz, director of the division of neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Maryland. "If you can stop them, you have a chance of slowing down or possibly even stopping progression." A breakthrough can't come soon enough. The number of Alzheimer's cases globally is expected to double within 20 years as the world's population ages, to as many as 65.7 million people in 2030 and 115 million by 2050, the Geneva- based World Health Organization said in April. © independent.co.uk

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 17394 - Posted: 10.20.2012

By Laura Sanders NEW ORLEANS — Fearful associations can be knocked back during sleep, research in mice shows. After receiving an injection of a drug, a nasty link between a scent and a painful foot shock faded as the mice slumbered. The results are preliminary but may ultimately show how to get around a roadblock in treatments for people with post-traumatic stress disorder: Traumatic associations can be weakened in a doctor’s office, but those memories can flood back when triggered by specific events in everyday life. The new finding suggests that the hazy world of sleep, lacking any particular real-world context, might be a better place to diminish such memories. Neuroscientist Asya Rolls of Stanford University and colleagues taught mice that when they smelled jasmine, a foot shock was not far behind. A day later, as the mice slept, the researchers wafted the smell over the animals, strengthening and solidifying the scary link between jasmine and pain. A day after that, the mice froze in fear when they caught a whiff of jasmine, even though the animals were in an entirely new room unassociated with the original shock. But Rolls and her team could interrupt this sleep-strengthening process with the antibiotic anisomycin, injected into the amygdala—a brain structure involved in memory storage. Before the mice were exposed to jasmine during sleep, the researchers injected some of them with the drug. The next day, these mice didn’t freeze as much as the mice that didn’t get the drug. The results suggest that during sleep, traumatic memories, such as the kind that plague people with PTSD, can be effectively weakened. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 17393 - Posted: 10.20.2012

By Dan Cossins There’s a new suspect in the search for the causes of Parkinson’s disease—deformities in the nuclear membrane of neural stem cells. Scientists observed the same defects, caused by a single gene mutation, in brain tissue samples from deceased Parkinson’s patients, suggesting that nuclear deterioration—and the mutation that drives it—could play a role in the pathology of the disease. The study, published today (October 17) in Nature, also shows that correcting the mutation reverses this phenotype, pointing to new ways to treat this cause of neurodegeneration. “I don’t recall anyone ever suggesting this as a major phenotype [for Parkinson’s], so that’s really quite a big new direction for the field,” said Mark Cookson, a neuroscientist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, who did not participate in the study. Parkinson’s disease has traditionally been attributed to a loss of dopamine-generating neurons, which leads to the degenerative muscle control that is characteristic of the disease. But Parkinson’s also causes many other sensory problems, which cannot be explained by a dopaminergic mechanism. Over the past 5 years, several groups have shown that disruption of the structure of the nuclear envelope—the lipid bilayer that separates nucleus from cytoplasm—is correlated with aging and certain age-related pathologies in the human brain, though the precise role of nuclear defects in the diseases remained unclear. Meanwhile, since 2004 scientists including Cookson have demonstrated that a mutation in the luceine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene is correlated with Parkinson’s. However, the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which the LRRK2 mutation might drive disease progression remained a mystery. © 1986-2012 The Scientist

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 17392 - Posted: 10.20.2012

By Laura Sanders When sociologist Mike Tomlinson began combing through the health records of people in Northern Ireland, he wasn’t interested in suicide. He was on the hunt for links between poverty and international conflict. But he came across a startling trend. From 1998 to 2008, the rate at which men in their mid-30s to mid-50s were committing suicide rose alarmingly fast, more quickly than the rate for the rest of Northern Ireland’s population. At first, that spike made no sense. A peace agreement reached in 1998 transformed Northern Ireland into a prosperous and tranquil place. Economic indicators had been surprisingly good. Suicide rates in neighboring countries were all gently falling. Nothing seemed to explain why so many of these men were killing themselves. But Tomlinson found a hint in the men’s pasts. They had all grown up in the late 1960s and the 1970s, during some of the worst violence Northern Ireland had ever experienced. Called the Troubles, this warlike period brought religious and political fighting that pitted neighbor against neighbor. Children of the Troubles lived with terrorism, house-to-house searches, curfews and bomb explosions. Trauma early in life had rendered men more vulnerable to taking their own lives later, Tomlinson proposed in July in International Sociology. “If you were younger then, you carry that through,” says Tomlinson, of Queen’s University Belfast. This idea, that something that happened long ago could have such a profound effect today, seemed to resonate with others. When he described his idea to a suicide prevention group in Northern Ireland, “they just lit on it, and said it speaks so much to what they were seeing.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Epigenetics; Stress
Link ID: 17391 - Posted: 10.20.2012

By Marcia Malory Ask this question, and you will probably receive one of two responses: Yes. People choose to be gay. They are making an immoral choice, which government should discourage. Or No. Sexual preference is biologically determined. Government should protect gay people from discrimination because homosexuality is an unalterable aspect of their identity. These two answers have something in common: With both of them, the science conveniently supports the moral decision. What if neither answer is right? Perhaps sexual preference can be changed – and people have the right to engage in gay sex and have homosexual relationships if they choose to do so. (The fourth option, that gay people have no choice but to be gay, but should be punished for it anyway, is morally unthinkable.) What does science tell us about sexual preference? We know, from many twin and adoption studies, that sexual preference has a genetic component. A gay man is more likely than a straight man to have a (biological) gay brother; lesbians are more likely than straight women to have gay sisters. In 1993, a study published in the journal Science showed that families with two homosexual brothers were very likely to have certain genetic markers on a region of the X chromosome known as Xq28. This led to media headlines about the possibility of the existence of a “gay gene” and discussions about the ethics of aborting a “gay” fetus. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 17390 - Posted: 10.20.2012

By Tina Hesman Saey New work suggests that a hormone that makes the body think it’s starving could prolong life about as long as severely cutting calories does but without the denial. A hormone called fibroblast growth factor-21, or FGF21, lengthened the lives of mice that had been genetically engineered to constantly produce large amounts of the protein, researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas report online October 15 in eLife. The hormone is normally made by the liver during fasting and may tap into some of the same life-extending biochemical processes as does caloric restriction, a proven longevity booster. Caloric restriction — usually defined as cutting calorie intake to 75 to 80 percent of the amount needed to maintain normal body weight, while still maintaining good nutrition — has been shown lengthen life in a wide variety of species, such as fruit flies and dogs. Minimal calorie consumption turns on many different biological processes that slow aging, says Cynthia Kenyon, a developmental biologist at the University of California, San Francisco. The hormone in the study somehow interferes with a chain reaction anchored by insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), a process that is also shut down by caloric restriction and thought to be responsible for many of its life-extending effects. In the study, researchers led by UT Southwestern’s David Mangelsdorf and Steven Kliewer genetically engineered mice to constantly make five to 10 times as much FGF21 as normal. These engineered mice lived 30 to 40 percent longer than normal mice on a standard diet. Female mice benefitted from the hormone even more than males; about a third of the FGF21-producing female mice still were alive at 44 months old. Average survival for normal mice in the study was about 28 months. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Obesity; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 17389 - Posted: 10.20.2012

By David DiSalvo Neuroscientists aren’t usually thought of as advocates for special interests. They’re a generally objective bunch, dedicated to their discipline and concerned above all with making solid contributions to understanding how our brains work. Advances in understanding and treating Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and a host of other diseases and conditions are largely attributable to the commitment of neuroscientists focused on solving some of the most difficult problems in medicine. But, over the past decade, as neuroscience—and brain imaging in particular—has become a star science attraction, the role of the impartial neuroscientist has been redefined. When the forces of marketing realized that neuroscience could assist in predicting consumer behavior, neuroscientists became a hot commodity as “consultants” to some of the biggest brands on the planet. Soon “neuromarketing” was born, and firms armed with fMRI machines started becoming mainstays at consumer focus groups for Fortune 500 companies. A similar story is playing out in the legal arena—but the stakes are much higher. When neuroscientists are recruited to weigh in on critical issues like lie detection and the alleged mental state of a defendant, people’s lives, and not just their wallets, are directly affected. But much of this technology is too new to be reliable. Furthermore, neuroscience experts aren’t just being used on the stand—they are also being paid to help select, even sway, juries, and that poses an entirely new ethical dilemma. © 2012 The Slate Group, LLC

Keyword: Brain imaging; Stress
Link ID: 17388 - Posted: 10.20.2012

By Nick Triggle Health correspondent, BBC News Obesity surgery is often seen as a quick fix, without proper consideration of the risks, a review says. The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death looked at the care given to more than 300 patients at NHS and private hospitals in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It found that many were given insufficient time or information to properly consent to the operations. Post-surgery care was also found to be lacking, the watchdog said. In particular, it highlighted the fact patients were not always given access to dieticians and psychologists. The report also suggested the failings could be contributing to the high number of readmissions - nearly a fifth of the patients had to return within six months. Weight loss operations, such as the fitting of gastric bands, have been growing in popularity. There were more than 8,000 of these operations, sometimes called bariatric surgery, carried out by the NHS last year - and the number is rising by about 10% a year. BBC © 2012

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 17387 - Posted: 10.18.2012

By Cari Nierenberg The strange folds and furrows covering a Brazilian man's entire scalp was neither a funky new look nor a hipster trend. Rather the 21-year-old's bizarre looking scalp with its deep skin folds in a pattern said to resemble the surface of the brain is a sign of a rare medical condition known as cutis verticis gyrata. In this week's New England Journal of Medicine, two Brazilian doctors describe this young man's case and share a picture of its odd appearance. When he was 19, the skin on his scalp started to change. It grew thicker, forming many soft, spongy ridges and narrow ruts. Even his hair had an unusual configuration. It was normal in the furrows but sparser over the folds as is common for this strange scalp condition. No doubt, visits to the barber shop as well as washing his squishy scalp and combing his hair were peculiar experiences. Despite the extent of his scalp affected, "the patient did not have the habit of covering his head," with a hat, for instance, says Dr. Karen Schons a dermatologist at the Hospital Universitario de Santa Maria, who examined the patient and co-authored the case study. In fact, the case study reports that "the condition did not bother him cosmetically." © 2012 NBCNews.com

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 17386 - Posted: 10.18.2012

by Helen Thomson, New Orleans HUMANS are constantly searching for an elixir of youth - could it be that an infusion of young blood holds the key? This seems to be true for mice, at least. According to research presented this week at the Society for Neuroscience conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, giving young blood to old mice can reverse some of the effects of age-related cognitive decline. Last year, Saul Villeda, then at Stanford University in California, and colleagues showed they could boost the growth of new cells in the brains of old mice by giving them a blood infusion from young mice (Nature, doi.org/c9jwvm). "We know that blood has this huge effect on brain cells, but we didn't know if its effects extended beyond cell regeneration," he says. Now the team has tested for changes in cognition by linking the circulatory systems of young and old mice. Once the blood of each conjoined mouse had fully mixed with the other, the researchers analysed their brains. Tissue from the hippocampus of old mice given young blood showed changes in the expression of 200 to 300 genes, particularly in those involved in synaptic plasticity, which underpins learning and memory. They also found changes in some proteins involved in nerve growth. The infusion of young blood also boosted the number and strength of neuronal connections in an area of the brain where new cells do not grow. This didn't happen when old mice received old blood. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 17385 - Posted: 10.18.2012

Nearly a quarter of seniors said they'd like to participate in more social activities, according to a new report by Statistics Canada. The agency released the first nationally representative study on barriers to social participation by seniors on Wednesday. "Social engagement — involvement in meaningful activities and maintaining close relationships — is a component of successful aging," wrote Heather Gilmour of Statistics Canada's health analysis division. "The results of this analysis highlight the importance of frequent social participation to maintaining quality of life." Overall, an estimated 80 per cent said they were frequent participants in at least one social activity, such as seeing relatives or friends outside the household, attending church or religious activities like a choir or sports at least weekly or attending concerts or volunteering at least monthly. "The greater the number of frequent social activities, the higher the odds of positive self-perceived health, and the lower the odds of loneliness and life dissatisfaction," Gilmour said. "This is consistent with research that has found seniors with a wider range of social ties have better well-being." © CBC 2012

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Alzheimers
Link ID: 17384 - Posted: 10.18.2012

by Sara Reardon, New Orleans, Louisiana Does beer make you shlur your wordsh? You're not alone: drunk zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) sing songs that are blurrier and more disordered than those of their sober counterparts. What's more, binge drinking may permanently impair juvenile finches' ability to learn new songs – which could have implications for our understanding of the effect of heavy drinking on adolescents. Having a unique and interesting song is important for zebra finches to mate, and each male develops his own signature tune as he matures, says Christopher Olson of Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Because zebra finch song is so well studied, Olson and colleagues decided to find out how alcohol would affect it. First, they had to find out whether finches are even interested in alcohol. When they gave a group of adult finches 6 per cent ethanol in their water bottles, the birds drank enough of it that their blood alcohol content sometimes reached 0.8 per cent: the legal limit for drivers in many places. The birds were also happy to sing while drunk. Using audio analysis software, the researchers determined the degree of "white noise", or disorganised sounds, in their songs. The drunk birds' songs were significantly more broken and disorganised. "It's their husky bar voice," says Olson. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Language
Link ID: 17383 - Posted: 10.18.2012

by Moheb Costandi NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA—Books and educational toys can make a child smarter, but they also influence how the brain grows, according to new research presented here on Sunday at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. The findings point to a "sensitive period" early in life during which the developing brain is strongly influenced by environmental factors. Studies comparing identical and nonidentical twins show that genes play an important role in the development of the cerebral cortex, the thin, folded structure that supports higher mental functions. But less is known about how early life experiences influence how the cortex grows. To investigate, neuroscientist Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania and her colleagues recruited 64 children from a low income background and followed them from birth through to late adolescence. They visited the children's homes at 4 and 8 years of age to evaluate their environment, noting factors such as the number of books and educational toys in their houses, and how much warmth and support they received from their parents. More than 10 years after the second home visit, the researchers used MRI to obtain detailed images of the participants' brains. They found that the level of mental stimulation a child receives in the home at age 4 predicted the thickness of two regions of the cortex in late adolescence, such that more stimulation was associated with a thinner cortex. One region, the lateral inferior temporal gyrus, is involved in complex visual skills such as word recognition. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Language
Link ID: 17382 - Posted: 10.18.2012