Sharon Begley Like many colleges, Washington University in St. Louis offers children of its faculty free tuition. So Leonard Green, a professor of psychology there, did all he could to persuade his daughter to choose the school. He extolled its academic offerings, praised its social atmosphere, talked up its extracurricular activities—and promised that if Hannah chose Washington he would give her $20,000 each undergraduate year, plus $20,000 at graduation, for a nest egg totaling $100,000. She went to New York University. To many, this might seem like a simple case of shortsightedness, a decision based on today’s wants (an exciting city, independence) versus tomorrow’s needs (money, shelter). Indeed, the choice to spend rather than save reflects a very human—and, some would say, American—quirk: a preference for immediate gratification over future gains. In other words, we get far more joy from buying a new pair of shoes today, or a Caribbean vacation, or an iPhone 4S, than from imagining a comfortable life tomorrow. Throw in an instant-access culture—in which we can get answers on the Internet within seconds, have a coffeepot delivered to our door overnight, and watch movies on demand—and we’re not exactly training the next generation to delay gratification. “Pleasure now is worth more to us than pleasure later,” says economist William Dickens of Northeastern University. “We much prefer current consumption to future consumption. It may even be wired into us.” © 2011 The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC

Keyword: Attention; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15984 - Posted: 11.05.2011

Regardless of high or low overall scores on an IQ test, children with dyslexia show similar patterns of brain activity, according to researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health. The results call into question the discrepancy model — the practice of classifying a child as dyslexic on the basis of a lag between reading ability and overall IQ scores. In many school systems, the discrepancy model is the criterion for determining whether a child will be provided with specialized reading instruction. With the discrepancy model, children with dyslexia and lower-than-average IQ scores may not be classified as learning disabled and so may not be eligible for special educational services to help them learn to read. "The study results indicate that the discrepancy model is not a valid basis for allocating special educational services in reading," said Brett Miller, Ph.D. The study findings were published online in Psychological Science. The study was conducted by Fumiko Hoeft, M.D., Ph.D., of Stanford University. Originally, the U.S. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act required the use of the discrepancy model to identify those students who needed assistance for a learning disability. In the 1990s, studies showed that children who had difficulty learning to read had difficulty with phonological awareness — matching printed letters of the alphabet to the speech sounds that those letters represented. Based on these findings, the reauthorization of the Act dropped the requirement that school systems use the discrepancy model. Many school systems, however, retained the discrepancy model as a means to classify students needing special educational services in reading.

Keyword: Dyslexia
Link ID: 15983 - Posted: 11.05.2011

Sarah C P Williams Most laboratory mice, when meeting new cagemates, will sniff the strangers thoroughly. But the mice in Matthew Anderson's lab instead sit alone, licking their paws repetitively. They ignore other mice, avoid new toys and rarely make noise. Taken together, the abnormalities closely resemble the behavioral symptoms seen in people with autism, a disorder that has been proven difficult to accurately recapitulate in animal models—until recently. “When I first started working on this, I really wondered whether we'd be able to study autism in a mouse,” says Anderson, a neuroscientist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “But these mice act just like you would expect with autism. I was pleasantly surprised.” Mouse models for autism first started to emerge around ten years ago. And as researchers have discovered more genes linked to the disease, they have continued to generate more mouse models that are collectively providing the field with a window into the brain structure, neuron function and cellular pathways associated with autism, as well as a platform for testing new drugs. But as more models emerge, it has become increasingly clear that the field needs standardized behavioral assays to compare the effects of the different genetic mutations more clearly. “All these mice have been tested in different labs using different paradigms,” says Daniel Geschwind, a neurogeneticist at the University of California–Los Angeles. “People bandy about repetitive behavior, for example, but what some folks call repetitive behavior is different than what others call repetitive behavior.” © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15982 - Posted: 11.03.2011

Hannah Waters This past spring, Christian Schaaf sat back and watched seven-year-old Lily play in his office at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. She looked just like any other girl her age, he recalls, but she didn't seek interaction or even eye contact in the way a child normally would. Instead, she communed with a corner of the room, excitably hopping and flapping her arms as if that spot held a treat too great to bear. Without peering into the file in front of him, Schaaf knew what afflicted Lily. “I've seen enough children that when I see someone with autism, I have a high suspicion for it,” he says. Lily (not her real name) and her mother didn't come to Schaaf's office that day for a diagnosis; a psychiatrist had already detected autism after her fourth birthday. They visited Schaaf, a clinical geneticist, to search her genome using a chromosomal microarray. The technology can find duplications or deletions of small segments of DNA, known as copy-number variants (CNVs), to pinpoint the genetic aberration that might have caused the disorder. Lily's parents hoped that a genetic diagnosis would help them better understand and treat her specific form of autism—and, ultimately, help her get the services she needs to have the best chance at adult independence. Such genetic tests for autism have only become available in the last few years. But, owing to high demand, autism testing has expanded from research centers to private companies. In the US, six companies now offer laboratory-developed tests to doctors that specifically target the developmental disorder, searching the genome for either irregular CNVs or single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that could explain the symptoms. And these tests aren't cheap: a microarray costs, on average, $1,500, and that's without the bells and whistles such as doctor visits and additional gene sequencing. Although the tests themselves aren't therapeutic, they represent the leading edge of a deeper genetic understanding of autism that could lead to targeted therapies—a market that UK-based research publisher Global Data expects to top $5 billion in the US in 2018, according to an October report. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15981 - Posted: 11.03.2011

Meredith Wadman The e-mail that ended one career for Alison Singer, but started another, arrived as she was cooking dinner for her daughters one evening in January 2009. Singer was preoccupied. At a committee meeting she was due to attend in Washington DC the next day, she and others were set to vote on a plan that would direct much of the United States' spending on autism research for the next year. Singer, who had her laptop perched on the kitchen counter, immediately noticed the e-mail from another committee member — a mother who was convinced that vaccines had caused her son's autism. The message proposed last-minute language for inclusion in the plan, endorsing more research into whether vaccines can trigger the disorder of communication and movement. Singer knew immediately that this would cause her serious difficulties. Having read the literature and talked to numerous scientists, she was convinced that no studies supported a link between autism and vaccines. But she was also the top communications executive at Autism Speaks in New York, autism's most prominent research and advocacy group. The organization supports vaccine-related research, and Singer knew that her bosses would expect her to vote for more studies of vaccines as a possible cause of the condition. nature.com/autism At 11:10 p.m., Singer hit 'send' on an e-mail of her own, to Bob and Suzanne Wright, the co-founders of Autism Speaks. "I've concluded that as a matter of personal conscience, I cannot vote in favor of dedicating more funds to vaccine research that has already been undertaken and which I and many others find conclusive," her message read. "I feel compelled to offer my resignation." © 2011 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 15980 - Posted: 11.03.2011

Lizzie Buchen In the opening scene of The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg portrays a cold Mark Zuckerberg getting dumped by his girlfriend, who is exasperated by the future Facebook founder's socially oblivious and obsessive personality. Eisenberg's Zuckerberg is the stereotypical Silicon Valley geek — brilliant with technology, pathologically bereft of social graces. Or, in the parlance of the Valley: 'on the spectrum'. Few scientists think that the leaders of the tech world actually have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which can range from the profound social, language and behavioural problems that are characteristic of autistic disorder, to the milder Asperger's syndrome. But according to an idea that is creeping into the popular psyche, they and many others in professions such as science and engineering may display some of the characteristics of autism, and have an increased risk of having children with the full-blown disorder. nature.com/autism The roots of this idea can largely be traced to psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen at the University of Cambridge, UK. According to a theory he has been building over the past 15 years, the parents of autistic children, and the children themselves, have an aptitude for understanding and analysing predictable, rule-based systems — think machines, mathematics or computer programs. And the genes that endow parents with minds suited to technical tasks, he hypothesizes, could lead to autism when passed on to their children, especially when combined with a dose of similar genes from a like-minded mate1. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Autism; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 15979 - Posted: 11.03.2011

Karen Weintraub When Leo Kanner first described autism in 1943, he based his observations on 11 children with severe communication problems, repetitive behaviours such as rocking and an acute lack of social interaction. The physician and psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, predicted that there were probably many more cases than he or anyone else had noticed1. "These characteristics form a unique 'syndrome', not heretofore reported," he wrote, "which seems to be rare enough, yet is probably more frequent than is indicated by the paucity of observed cases." Kanner's prophecy has been more than fulfilled. An early study2, in 1966, examined eight- to ten-year-old schoolchildren in Middlesex, UK, and estimated a prevalence of 4.5 cases per 10,000 children. By 1992, 19 in every 10,000 six-year-old Americans were being diagnosed as autistic3. Numbers skyrocketed in the first decade of the twenty-first century, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. Surveying what is now known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the CDC found that by 2006, more than 90 in 10,000 eight-year-olds in the United States had autism4. Put another way, autism was now affecting 1 in every 110 children — a figure that strengthened public fears that an 'epidemic' was afoot (see 'Diagnosis: rising'). © 2011 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 15978 - Posted: 11.03.2011

Until recently, there was very little awareness of autism in the Middle East, and very few, if any, data about the prevalence of the condition. This is now beginning to change. Bolstered by international collaborations, the past decade has seen a number of autism research centers and non-profit organizations established across the Middle East. These institutions conduct research and provide educational services and training for children with autism and their relatives. Recent research has also shown that large Middle Eastern families can provide autism researchers with new opportunities to understand the genetic causes of the condition. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised primarily by impaired social interactions and communication and by repetitive, stereotyped behaviours. In parts of the Middle East, autism, along with other psychiatric conditions, were traditionally thought to be the work of black magic or the "evil eye," in the past, and children with autism were kept out of mainstream society, with little or no access to education. "There is not enough awareness about autism in Egypt or other countries in the region," says Ranwa Yehia, whose four-year-old son Nadeem has the condition. "Like everything else, people fear what they do not understand and inadvertently discriminate against it because they don't know otherwise." © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15977 - Posted: 11.03.2011

By Rachael Rettner People with autism have advantages, in some ways, over people without the condition, and scientists need to stop viewing the traits of autism as flaws that need to be corrected, one autism researcher argues. By seeing autism's differences as defects, researchers may fail to fully understand the condition, said Dr. Laurent Mottron, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Montreal. "Recent data and my own personal experience suggest it's time to start thinking of autism as an advantage in some spheres, not a cross to bear," Mottron wrote in a commentary published Wednesday in the journal Nature. For instance, when researchers see activation in regions of autistic people's brains that differ from others' brains, they report these differences as deficits, "rather than evidence simply of their alternative, yet sometimes successful, brain organization," Mottron said. By emphasizing the strengths of people with autism, deciphering how people with autism learn and avoiding language that frames autism as a defect, researchers can shape the discussion of autism in society, Mottron said. Mottron said he does not want to minimize the challenges of autism. "One out of 10 autistics cannot speak, nine out of 10 have no regular job and four out of five autistic adults are still dependent on their parents," Mottron said. © 2011 msnbc.com

Keyword: Autism; Attention
Link ID: 15976 - Posted: 11.03.2011

Virginia Gewin Nicotine causes changes in gene regulation that enhance the brain's subsequent response to cocaine. The finding, in mice, provides the first clear evidence for a molecular mechanism supporting the idea of 'gateway drugs'. Epidemiologist Denise Kandel at Columbia University, New York, reported back in 1975 that drug-using adolescents had tended to start with cigarettes, which contain the addictive substance nicotine, and alcohol before progressing to more illicit substances such as cocaine1. The idea that smoking and alcohol act as a gateway, making teenagers more likely to experiment with other drugs, has proved controversial ever since. Now Kandel has collaborated with her husband of 56 years, neurobiologist Eric Kandel, and other colleagues at Columbia, to probe the molecular biology underlying the gateway effect. In a study published today in Science Translational Medicine2, the team shows that, in mice at least, nicotine causes epigenetic changes — long-lasting changes in the control of gene expression — that subsequently boost the response to cocaine. Neurobiologists Eric Nestler and Alfred Robison of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York suggested in a review published earlier this month that such gene priming is likely to be at work in drug addiction3. But their prediction was based on limited existing evidence. "This paper is exciting because it is one of the first well-defined characterizations of gene priming by a drug," says Robison. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15975 - Posted: 11.03.2011

by Andy Coghlan Not all brain regions are created equal – instead, a "rich club" of 12 well-connected hubs orchestrates everything that goes on between your ears. This elite cabal could be what gives us consciousness, and might be involved in disorders such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease. As part of an ongoing effort to map the human "connectome" – the full network of connections in the brain – Martijn van den Heuvel of the University Medical Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and Olaf Sporns of Indiana University Bloomington scanned the brains of 21 people as they rested for 30 minutes. The researchers used a technique called diffusion tensor imaging to track the movements of water through 82 separate areas of the brain and their interconnecting neurons. They found 12 areas of the brain had significantly more connections than all the others, both to other regions and among themselves. "These 12 regions have twice the connections of other brain regions, and they're more strongly connected to each other than to other regions," says Van den Heuvel. "If we wanted to look for consciousness in the brain, I would bet on it turning out to be this rich club," he adds. The elite group consists of six pairs of identical regions, with one of each pair in each hemisphere of the brain. Each member is known to accept only preprocessed, high-order information, rather than raw incoming sensory data. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Attention; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15974 - Posted: 11.03.2011

by Peter Aldhous An announcement for children being treated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: the drugs used do not seem to increase the risk of stroke, heart attack or sudden death from heart failure. Fears about cardiovascular side effects surfaced in 2006, when the US Food and Drug Administration was looking into 25 reports of sudden deaths among people taking the stimulants, 19 of them children. A team led by William Cooper of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, has now studied more than 1.2 million children and young adults, following each for more than two years on average. They recorded just 81 serious cardiovascular events, and these were no more likely to have occurred in the minority taking stimulant drugs. Long-term question However, questions about the drugs' safety will remain. Given that they can increase heart rate and blood pressure. Almut Winterstein at the University of Florida in Gainesville is concerned about the effects of long-term use. She has found that more than 15 per cent of children in Florida who are prescribed stimulants carry on taking them for at least five years. In addition to 2.7 million or more American children, it is thought that at least 1.5 million adults in the US are currently taking stimulants for ADHD. Older adults may be at some risk, given that cardiovascular disease is more common with advancing age. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 15973 - Posted: 11.03.2011

By KATE MURPHY Overuse of antibiotics has led to the creation of drug-resistant bacteria — so-called superbugs, like methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus. But now some researchers are exploring an equally unsettling possibility: Antibiotic abuse may also be contributing to the increasing incidence of obesity, as well as allergies, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma and gastroesophageal reflux. Among those sounding the alarm is Dr. Martin Blaser, a professor of microbiology at New York University Langone Medical Center. In a commentary published in August in the journal Nature, he asserted that antibiotics are permanently altering microbial flora of the human body, also known as the microbiome or microbiota, with serious health consequences. The human gut in particular is home to billions of bacteria, but little is known about this hidden ecosystem. Take Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium associated with an increased risk of ulcers and gastric cancer. Many doctors are quick to prescribe antibiotics to kill it even when the patient has no symptoms. But in 1998, in a paper published in the British Medical Journal, Dr. Blaser was more circumspect, arguing that H. pylori might not be such a bad actor after all. “We’re talking about a bug that’s been in the human gut for at least 58,000 years,” Dr. Blaser said in an interview. “There’s probably a reason for that.” His lab has since produced a stream of findings supporting his suspicion. Dr. Blaser and his colleagues discovered, for instance, that the stomach behaves differently after a course of antibiotics eradicates resident H. pylori. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15972 - Posted: 11.03.2011

By BENEDICT CAREY ST. HELENA, Calif. — The scientists exchanged one last look and held their breath. Everything was ready. The electrode was in place, threaded between the two hemispheres of a living cat’s brain; the instruments were tuned to pick up the chatter passing from one half to the other. The only thing left was to listen for that electronic whisper, the brain’s own internal code. The amplifier hissed — the three scientists expectantly leaning closer — and out it came, loud and clear. “We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine ....” “The Beatles’ song! We somehow picked up the frequency of a radio station,” recalled Michael S. Gazzaniga, chuckling at the 45-year-old memory. “The brain’s secret code. Yeah, right!” Dr. Gazzaniga, 71, now a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is best known for a dazzling series of studies that revealed the brain’s split personality, the division of labor between its left and right hemispheres. But he is perhaps next best known for telling stories, many of them about blown experiments, dumb questions and other blunders during his nearly half-century career at the top of his field. Now, in lectures and a new book, he is spelling out another kind of cautionary tale — a serious one, about the uses of neuroscience in society, particularly in the courtroom. Brain science “will eventually begin to influence how the public views justice and responsibility,” Dr. Gazzaniga said at a recent conference here sponsored by the Edge Foundation. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 15971 - Posted: 11.01.2011

By Jennifer Viegas A 25-year-old chimpanzee named "Panzee" has just demonstrated that speech perception is not a uniquely human trait. Well-educated Panzee understands more than 130 English language words and even recognizes words in sine-wave form, a type of synthetic speech that reduces language to three whistle-like tones. This shows that she isn't just responding to a particular person's voice or emotions, but instead she is processing and perceiving speech as humans do. "The results suggest that the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans may have had the capability to perceive speech-like sounds before the evolution of speech, and that early humans were taking advantage of this latent ability when speech did eventually emerge," said Lisa Heimbauer who presented a talk today on the chimp at the 162nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in San Diego. Heimbauer, a doctoral candidate and researcher at Georgia State University's Language Research Center, and colleagues Michael Owren and Michael Beran tested Panzee on her ability to understand words communicated via sine-wave speech, which replicates the estimated frequency and amplitude patterns of natural utterances. "Tickle," "M&M," "lemonade," and "sparkler" were just a few of the test words. Even when the words were stripped of the acoustic constituents of natural speech, Panzee knew what they meant, correctly matching them to corresponding photos. The findings refute what is known as the "Speech is Special" theory. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 15970 - Posted: 11.01.2011

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 15969 - Posted: 11.01.2011

By The Editors As many as 35 million people worldwide have Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia among adults over 60 years of age. That figure could reach 115 million by 2050, concludes the nonprofit Alzheimer's Disease International. In the U.S., about 5 percent of adults 65 to 74 have Alzheimer's, and nearly half of those age 85 and older may have it, according to figures of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. The predominant explanation for how Alzheimer's disease develops and ravages the brain are explained at a new site built by TheVisualMD. We present a few examples of the stunning graphics used on the site below. You can read the complete e-book at TheVisualMD landing page here. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 15968 - Posted: 11.01.2011

By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News The idea of making brain cancers glow to help surgeons operate is being tested in the UK. Patients will be given a drug, 5-amino-levulinic acid (5-ALA), which causes a build-up of fluorescent chemicals in the tumour. The theory is that the pink glow will clearly mark the edges of the tumour, making it easier to ensure all of it is removed. More than 60 patients with glioblastoma will take part in the trial. They have cancerous glial cells, which normally hold the brain's nerves cells in place. On average patients survive 15 months after being diagnosed. No room for error In some cancers, such as those of the colon, some of the surrounding tissue can be removed as well as the tumour. Removing a brain tumour needs to be more precise. Dr Colin Watts, who is leading the trial at the University of Cambridge, told the BBC that surgeons "don't want to take too much functional tissue away". BBC © 2011

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 15967 - Posted: 11.01.2011

by Helen Fields Happy people don't just enjoy life; they're likely to live longer, too. A new study has found that those in better moods were 35% less likely to die in the next 5 years when taking their life situations into account. The traditional way to measure a person's happiness is to ask them about it. But over the past few decades, psychologist and epidemiologist Andrew Steptoe of University College London (UCL) says, scientists have realized that those measures aren't reliable. It's not clear whether they "assess how they're actually feeling or how they remember feeling," he says. When answering, people are more likely to count their blessings and compare their experience with the lives of others. The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing tried to get more specific. It has followed more than 11,000 people age 50 and older since 2002. In 2004, about 4700 of them collected saliva samples four times in one day and, at those same times, rated how happy, excited, content, worried, anxious, and fearful they felt. The saliva samples are still awaiting analysis for stress hormones, but Steptoe and his UCL colleague Jane Wardle publish findings today on the links between mood and mortality in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Of the 924 people who reported the least positive feelings, 7.3%, or 67, died within 5 years. For people with the most positive feelings, the rate fell in half, to 3.6%, or 50 of 1399 people. Of course, it's possible that people who died sooner weren't as chipper because they were deathly ill or because of any number of other factors that affect both mortality and mood. The researchers adjusted for age, sex, demographic factors such as wealth and education, signs of depression, health (including whether they'd been diagnosed with major diseases), and health behaviors such as smoking and physical activity. Even with those adjustments, the risk of dying in the next 5 years was still 35% lower for the happiest people. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15966 - Posted: 11.01.2011

By Danielle Perszyk Are humans the only species with enough smarts to craft a language? Most of us believe that we are. Although many animals have their own form of communication, none has the depth or versatility heard in human speech. We are able to express almost anything on our mind by uttering a few sounds in a particular order. Human language has a flexibility and complexity that seems to be universally shared across cultures and, in turn, contributes to the variation and richness we find among human cultures. But are the rules of grammar unique to human language? Perhaps not, according to a recent study, which showed that songbirds may also communicate using a sophisticated grammar—a feature absent in even our closest relatives, the nonhuman primates. Kentaro Abe and Dai Watanabe of Kyoto University performed a series of experiments to determine whether Bengalese finches expect the notes of their tunes to follow a certain order. To test this possibility, Abe and Watanabe took advantage of a behavioral response called habituation, where animals zone-out when exposed to the same stimulus over and over again. In each experiment, the birds were presented with the same songs until they became familiarized with the tune. The researchers then created novel songs by shuffling the notes around. But not every new song caught the birds’ attention; rather, the finches increased response calls only to songs with notes arranged in a particular order, suggesting that the birds used common rules when forming the syntax of that song. When the researchers created novel songs with even more complicated artificial grammar—for example, songs that mimicked a specific feature found in human (Japanese) language—the birds still only responded to songs that followed the rules. © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 15965 - Posted: 10.29.2011