By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News Scientists in the US have identified an area of the brain which makes heroin-addicted rats relapse. The study, published in Nature Neuroscience, showed that part of the medial prefrontal cortex was activated. When the researchers blocked nerve cells in the region, there were fewer relapses. Experts in the UK said the study was a technical 'tour de force'; however, it did not promise new treatments in humans. The study worked on the idea that when addicts stopped taking drugs, but then returned to the place they were taking drugs, they were likely to relapse. Rats were trained to take drugs in one environment, where they were delivered a dose of heroin. The rodents then "went to rehab" in another environment where the feel of the floor, lights and sounds were different and there was no access to heroin. Once the rats were "clean" they were returned to the drug-taking environment, where they demonstrated heroin-seeking behaviour. By examining the rats' brains, the researchers showed increased activity in some neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex. BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15024 - Posted: 02.21.2011

by Jessica Hamzelou Beyond erasing wrinkles, Botox can now help people who spend more than half their lives in headache agony. But is there enough evidence to support treating chronic migraine sufferers with regular shots of the toxin around the head and neck? Doctors are divided. What is Botox? Botox is the trade name for botulinum toxin – a protein produced by the Clostridium botulinum bacterium. By blocking the release of a chemical messenger in the brain, the toxin stops muscles from contracting. Why try preventing migraines with it? The story starts around 10 years ago, with some of Hollywood's most revered residents – cosmetic surgeons. "The plastics people suggested that some of their patients had relief from migraine after Botox treatment," says Peter Goadsby, director of the University of California, San Francisco's Headache Centre. The idea began to spread and clinicians started giving Botox as an "off-label" treatment – that is, in a way not approved by regulators – to people with migraines. Allergan, the pharmaceutical company that developed Botox, soon cottoned on and started marketing Botox as a migraine treatment. However, with no proof that the treatment worked, last year the company was fined $375 million for unlawful marketing. Since then, a number of clinical trials have ruled out any significant reduction in normal tension headaches and non-chronic migraine after Botox treatment. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15023 - Posted: 02.19.2011

by Aria Pearson LEARNING and memory problems have been reversed in mice with a syndrome that mimics Down's. Catherine Spong and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, found they could prevent developmental problems in mice engineered to have Down's syndrome by injecting their mothers with two proteins, called NAP and SAL, while they were still in the womb. This treatment would carry many risks for humans, so the team wondered whether the proteins might also help adult mice. Spong's team engineered mice to have an extra chromosome 16, which causes similar problems to those caused by an extra chromosome 21 in humans, the trigger for Down's (see picture). The mice then had to find a submerged platform in a water maze using visual cues. Down's mice usually take twice as long to find the platform as healthy mice. However, after four days of oral treatment with NAP and SAL, the Down's mice learned to navigate the maze just as easily as normal mice. NAP and SAL are fragments of proteins normally produced by glial cells - brain cells that provide nourishment to neurons. We know that glial cells malfunction in people with Down's. Mice treated with the proteins had markers of healthy glial function that were missing in the untreated Down's mice. In a second experiment, the team investigated whether the treatment caused changes in chemicals known to be involved in "long-term potentiation" (LTP) - a type of brain activity key to memory formation. People and mice with Down's have decreased levels of many chemicals involved in this process. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15022 - Posted: 02.19.2011

Catherine de Lange, reporter You've probably seen the Dutch artist M. C. Escher's work, even if you don't know him by name. Escher is famous for mathematically-inspired pictures of structures that look perfectly normal at first glance, but turn out to be impossible on closer inspection. One of his most famous works is Waterfall, in which a stream of water pours from the top of a watermill into a pool at its base - and then bafflingly flows "uphill" to pour from the top all over again. The visual effect is certainly clever, but impossible to recreate in the real world - or is it? In the video above, when water is poured into the bottom of the contraption it appears to flow upwards, seemingly in defiance of gravity. Of course, there must be some sort of trick involved: we've shown you before how careful camera-work and clever 3D structures can play games with your brain. But so far, the ingenious builder of this illusion - known as mcwolles on YouTube - has yet to reveal how he created it. Can you figure it out? Let us know in the comments! And we'll ask the experts for their opinions too. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 15021 - Posted: 02.19.2011

By Susan Milius Don’t judge a bear by its temperature, or so suggests first-of-its-kind data on hibernation physiology. There’s something as-yet-unknown going on with black bear hibernation that slows metabolic rates more than lower body temperatures alone can explain, reports ecological physiologist Øivind Tøien of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. In the depths of Alaskan winters, closely monitored black bears dropped their temperatures only a modest 5.5 degrees Celsius on average, Tøien and his colleagues report in the Feb. 18 Science. A standard physiologist’s calculation predicts that such a chill would slow metabolism to 65 percent of nonhibernating resting rates. But the bears’ metabolisms plunged down to even more energy-saving zones, averaging only 25 percent of the basic summer rate. This sustained, big disconnect hasn’t shown up so far in research on any other hibernating mammal, says study coauthor Brian M. Barnes, also of UA Fairbanks. Mammal hibernation matters to human medical research, says physiological ecologist Hank Harlow of the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Relying on mechanisms that scientists would love to understand, black bears spend five to seven months without eating, drinking or taking a single bathroom break. But unlike bedridden or spacefaring people, the hibernators don’t lose their muscle strength or bone mass. “Bears are just remarkable,” Harlow says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15020 - Posted: 02.19.2011

by Ferris Jabr More men than women have autism – now we may know why. Sex hormones regulate a gene linked with the condition, making it more likely that males will accumulate testosterone in the dangerous amounts that are thought to lead to autism. For every female that has autism there are four males. To better understand this sex bias, Valerie Hu at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington DC and colleagues studied a gene implicated in autism called retinoic acid-related orphan receptor-alpha (RORA). This gene controls a molecule that switches many subsequent genes on and off. Previous research has shown that RORA is important for development of the cerebellum and that the brains of people with autism expressed less of it than normal. Mice that likewise express less RORA than normal display symptoms that resemble autism in humans, such as repetitive behaviours and deficits in spatial learning. Hormone bath To find out how RORA is affected by hormones, Hu's team bathed human brain cells expressing the gene in either oestradiol – a form of the major female sex hormone oestrogen – or the male sex hormone dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which is derived from testosterone. They found that oestradiol enhanced the gene's expression, whereas DHT suppressed it. The team also discovered that RORA regulates another gene which controls aromatase, an enzyme that converts testosterone to oestrogen. If RORA is under-expressed, then aromatase cannot function properly and testosterone will accumulate. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Autism; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 15019 - Posted: 02.19.2011

Analysis by Amanda Onion KCBS-TV reporter Serene Branson's now infamous garbled on-air appearance during last week's Grammy Awards is revealing how migraines can be so much more than headaches. After speculation roiled for days about what may have caused the Los Angeles-based reporter to start speaking in jumbled nonsense during her live on-air report from the Grammys last week (Was she drunk? Did she suffer a stroke?), Branson said in a TV interview with her station that the cause was most likely migraine. That night, she said, she started to get "a really bad headache," and things got strange from there. "At around 10 o'clock that night I was sitting in the live truck with my field producer and the photographer and I was starting to look at some of my notes," she said in the interview. "I started to think, the words on the page are blurry and I could notice that my thoughts were not forming the way they normally do." This might come as a surprise to those who don't suffer from migraines -- and even to some who do. The fact is that migraines are complicated neurological events that come in a myriad of forms. As a migraine sufferer myself, I can attest that they can strike in many different ways -- even for one person. One of my earliest migraine memories is seeing lines of words suddenly float off the page of a book I was reading and start rotating in circles. These kinds of eye tricks are one form of migraine aura -- a condition experienced by about one in five people before a migraine. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15018 - Posted: 02.19.2011

By Steve Connor Speaking a second language may slow the rate at which the brain declines with age, showing that bilingual people are better protected against Alzheimer's disease than people who use only one language. Several studies have now demonstrated a clear link between using a second language and cognitive decline, which can be explained by the idea that bilingualism acts like a "mental gymnasium" that keeps the brain active in later life, scientists said. The latest study, presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, found bilingual patients with probable Alzheimer's were more likely have delayed symptoms compared to monolingual patients. In fact, the effect of speaking a second language produced a stronger effect on delaying the onset of Alzheimer's than any drug currently used to control the disease, said Ellen Bialystok, professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, Canada. "The finding of a four- to five-year delay in the onset of symptoms of Alzheimer's disease is dramatic. There are no pharmacologic interventions that have shown comparable effects." Our interpretation of the present findings is that bilingualism is a cognitively demanding condition that contributes to cognitive reserve in much the same way as do other stimulating intellectual and social activities." The researchers believe the effect is directly connected with using a second language, rather than a side-effect of differences in occupation or education between bilingual and monolingual people. Experiments suggest it has something to do with the extra mental effort that goes into using a second language, Professor Bialystok said. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Language; Alzheimers
Link ID: 15017 - Posted: 02.19.2011

By Bruce Bower WASHINGTON — Babies living in bilingual homes get a perceptual boost by 8 months of age that may set the stage for more resilient thinking later in life, scientists reported February 18 at the American Association of the Advancement of Science annual meeting. Infants raised bilingual from birth can distinguish not only between their two native tongues but between two languages they’ve never been exposed to, just by watching adults speak without hearing what they say, said psychologist Janet Werker of the University of British Columbia. Babies being raised to speak one language lack these visual discrimination skills, Werker and her colleagues have found. Given regular exposure to two languages, infants develop a general ability to track closely what they hear and see in decoding languages, Werker proposed. In the visual realm, such information may include lip movements, the rhythm of the jaw opening and closing, and the full ensemble of facial movements while talking. Her earlier studies found that newborn babies that had been exposed prenatally to two languages prefer to listen to those languages over others and distinguish between sounds in the tongues that they regularly hear spoken. “Bilingual infants are able to keep their languages distinct from birth and may develop an increased sensitivity to voice and face cues for different languages,” Werker said. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15016 - Posted: 02.19.2011

By DAVID TULLER A new study suggests that psychotherapy and a gradual increase in exercise can significantly benefit patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. While this may sound like good news, the findings — published Thursday in The Lancet — are certain to displease many patients and to intensify a fierce, long-running debate about what causes the illness and how to treat it. Many patients, citing two recent high-profile studies, believe the syndrome may be caused by viruses related to mouse leukemia viruses, and they are clamoring for access to antiretroviral drugs used to treat the virus that causes AIDS. That treatment is very expensive and would be expected to continue indefinitely, and health insurers are not generally willing to pay for untested drug regimens. The new study, conducted at clinics in Britain and financed by that country’s government, is expected to lend ammunition to those who think the disease is primarily psychological or related to stress. The authors note that the goal of cognitive behavioral therapy, the type of psychotherapy tested in the study, is to change the psychological factors “assumed to be responsible for perpetuation of the participant’s symptoms and disability.” In the long-awaited study, patients who were randomly assigned to receive cognitive behavioral therapy or exercise therapy, in combination with specialized medical care, reported reduced fatigue levels and greater improvement in physical functioning than those receiving the medical care alone — or getting the medical care along with training in how to recognize the onset of fatigue and to adjust their activities accordingly. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 15015 - Posted: 02.19.2011

by Elizabeth Pennisi Every year, some 50 billion birds take to the air for their seasonal migrations. They may go 500 kilometers in a day and a few even travel from pole to pole. But how do they know when, where, and how far to fly? Although some of the answer lies in their DNA, nobody knew which genes or how they worked. Now ornithologists have pinned down one of those genes, and strange as it may sound, the length of that gene influences the length of the flights. "If we understand the genetics underlying migratory behavior, we can understand more about how and why migration evolves," says Chris Guglielmo, who studies bird migration at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. "We may also be better able to understand how quickly migration can disappear in response to climate change." As the moment for migration approaches, birds bulk up, adding muscle and fat. They hop and flap restlessly at night, shifting their internal clocks in anticipation of nighttime flights. Breeding experiments have shown that these shifts have a genetic basis, as do the timing, amount, and intensity of flights. Since the 1970s, ornithologists at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Starnberg, Germany, have studied European blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla), a common warbler in Europe, which typically head to the Mediterranean for the winter. Some blackcaps had established a new wintering area in the past few decades. The researchers wanted to know the genetic basis for the change. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Animal Migration; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15014 - Posted: 02.17.2011

By Ferris Jabr We like to think of our brain as an incredibly sophisticated thinking machine that has been fine-tuned by evolution. But recently researchers working with mice found that a tiny genetic manipulation significantly boosted brainpower with seemingly no negative consequences. People have this gene, too, and it is active in the same brain area. In other words, we may have a gene in our heads that is actively making us dumber. Emory University pharmacologist John Hepler and his team studied a section of the hippocampus called CA2, found in both mice and humans. Although the hippocampus is crucial for memory, the neurons in CA2, oddly, fail to participate in the cellular process on which learning and memory depend: long-term potentiation, which strengthens communication between neurons that fire together. The researchers noticed that the neurons in CA2 were saturated with RGS14, a signaling protein that mysteriously inhibits long-term potentiation. When the investigators bred mice lacking the gene that codes for RGS14, they found that the neurons in CA2 suddenly demonstrated long-term potentiation. The genetic tweak affected more than physiology—it changed how the mice performed on memory tests, too. The experimenters presented two identical objects to knock­out mice, which lacked the RGS14 gene, and to normal mice. Four hours and again 24 hours later, the researchers switched one of the objects with a new object. The knockout mice spent far more time exploring the new object than the normal mice did, indicating that the altered rodents had a better memory for distinguishing familiar and strange objects. Knockout mice also learned to navigate a water maze and locate a submerged platform faster than normal mice did. The scientists observed no detriments from removing the RGS14 gene. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15013 - Posted: 02.17.2011

By Nathan Seppa Some premature infants with a potentially blinding eye condition called retinopathy may now have an alternative to the laser surgery currently used to treat it. A drug outperforms the surgery in newborns who have abnormal blood vessel growth in the back of the retina near the optic nerve, researchers report in the Feb. 17 New England Journal of Medicine. The drug, bevacizumab, is used against some cancers because it inhibits manufacture of a protein called vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF, that drives vessel growth. Although VEGF is necessary for normal organ development, some premature newborns make too much in the eyes, fostering aberrant vessel networks that can lead to a detached retina and blindness if untreated. Babies born 10 weeks or more prematurely and weighing less than 3 pounds at birth are at highest risk for this condition, called retinopathy of prematurity. It usually resolves on its own. If not, laser surgery can burn off abnormal vessels, curbing VEGF and stopping vessel growth, reducing the blindness risk to 1 percent from 50 percent in untreated eyes, says Kimberly Drenser, a retinal surgeon at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., who wasn’t involved in this study. “Laser surgery, when it’s done well, is extremely effective,” she says. But laser treatment and cryotherapy, a freezing technique, damage peripheral areas of the retina, limiting side vision while saving more essential straight-on vision. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15012 - Posted: 02.17.2011

By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News A patient's belief that a drug will not work can become a self fulfilling prophecy, according to researchers. They showed the benefits of painkillers could be boosted or completely wiped out by manipulating expectations. The study, published in Science Translational Medicine, also identifies the regions of the brain which are affected. Experts said this could have important consequences for patient care and for testing new drugs. Heat was applied to the legs of 22 patients, who were asked to report the level of pain on a scale of one to 100. They were also attached to an intravenous drip so drugs could be administered secretly. The initial average pain rating was 66. Patients were then given a potent painkiller, remifentanil, without their knowledge and the pain score went down to 55. They were then told they were being given a painkiller and the score went down to 39. Then, without changing the dose, the patients were then told the painkiller had been withdrawn and to expect pain, and the score went up to 64. BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15011 - Posted: 02.17.2011

by Michael Marshall It's not just humans that benefit from the occasional power nap. Snails do too. Richard Stephenson and Vern Lewis of the University of Toronto in Canada noticed that great pond snails (Lymnaea stagnalis) in tanks in their lab spent 10 per cent of the time in a "quiescent" state: they would attach themselves to a solid surface and sit still with their muscles relaxed and their tentacles partially withdrawn. An animal that is sleeping rather than resting should be less responsive to stimulation. So the pair reasoned that if the quiescent snails only sluggishly withdrew into their shells when prodded in the head with a metal rod, they are probably sleeping – which is exactly what they found. This is the first evidence of sleep in gastropods, says Stephenson. Surprisingly, unlike most animals, snails do not sleep at a regular time each day. "Their sleeping behaviour is organised over two to three days," Stephenson says. He thinks the snails haven't evolved tight control of their sleep patterns because they need so little. Euan Brown of the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station in Naples, Italy, says the evidence for a sleep-like state is "very convincing". Animals sleep more if they regularly need to store new memories – not such an issue for the snail's plant-eating lifestyle, Brown says. He thinks the snails' simple form of sleep could date from early in evolutionary history, and that animals with more mentally demanding lifestyles subsequently evolved more elaborate ways of controlling their sleep. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sleep; Evolution
Link ID: 15010 - Posted: 02.17.2011

By Rachel Ehrenberg The kicks and somersaults of a developing baby aren’t the only in utero calisthenics. Babies also flex their mental muscles months before birth. Nerve cells from developing brains as young as 20 weeks old fire in a pattern that persists into adulthood, researchers report February 15 in the Journal of Neuroscience. The research provides a glimpse into the behavior of extremely young brain cells and could help scientists understand what happens when brain development goes awry. Cells from the cerebral cortices of 20- to 21-week-old fetuses exhibit bursts of electrical activity interspersed with periods of quiet, researchers from the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington found. When the adult brain is sleeping, or under anesthesia, it also displays this busy-then-quiet firing pattern, suggesting it may be an intrinsic property of human brains. The cerebral cortex deals with sensory information, thinking, emotion and consciousness. But even when not receiving input from the outside world, the nerve cells, or neurons, in this region oscillate between firing and resting. “In adults, we go to sleep and the cortex is disconnected from the outside environment — it sleeps alone. But you see this quiet synchronized activity,” says Igor Timofeev of Laval University in Québec. That young nerve cells behave in a similar way long before they grapple with outside input suggests that the firing pattern “is a very basic feature of the brain that occurs in very early stages of development,” says Timofeev. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15009 - Posted: 02.17.2011

People who smoke cigarettes or have smoked in the past may be more likely to develop Lou Gehrig's disease, according to a new study. The disease slowly kills the neurons that send messages between the brain and the rest of the body, causing patients to lose control of their muscles -- including those that are essential for eating and breathing. Most people who are diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, don't survive more than five years after the diagnosis. About 20,000 to 30,000 people in the United States have ALS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While about 10 percent of those cases are caused by a genetic defect, the rest have no known cause. Some previous studies have suggested that smoking may be one factor that increases a person's risk of getting ALS, but others have found no link. "Results have been rather conflicting regarding the association between smoking and ALS," said Dr. Fang Fang, who has investigated the question at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, but was not involved with the current study. Many ALS researchers tend to agree on a positive association between cigarette smoking and ALS risk although some quite-recent studies still report no link, he told Reuters Health in an e-mail. In the current study, researchers led by Dr. Hao Wang of the Harvard School of Public Health collected data from five long-term studies in the United States that altogether included more than a million adults. In all of the studies, participants had been asked if they currently smoked or had smoked in the past, and if so, how frequently and for how many years. Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15008 - Posted: 02.15.2011

By Rachel Saslow Once, "relaxation beverages" consisted of alcohol, chamomile tea and warm milk. Now, the field includes a slew of new drinks promising a better night's sleep using such ingredients as melatonin, valerian root and - think turkey - tryptophan. They have apt names such as Unwind, iChill and Dream Water, and offer such flavors as Berry-Berry Tired, Snoozeberry and Lullaby Lemon. They're the inverse of energy drinks. Consumers can wake up with Red Bull and then wind down with Slow Cow. But can consumers trust these fruity concoctions to give them their z's? According to Steven M. Scharf, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, the answer is a resounding maybe. "The issue is this: Some of them probably have some biologic effect, but they haven't been as well studied as you'd like," Scharf says. "Nobody's ever compared valerian root to [the prescription sleep aid] Ambien." The chief ingredient in many of these beverages is melatonin, a hormone that induces sleepiness and helps coordinate the body's biological clock. It's typically released by the pineal gland around 10 p.m.; secretion stops around 4 or 5 a.m., helping to trigger the body to wake up, Scharf says. The body produces about three-fourths of a milligram of melatonin a day. The manufacturer of the sleep aid Snooz'n says its 2.5-ounce "shots" contain five milligrams of melatonin; Unwind, a "relaxation blend," has three milligrams per 12-ounce can. © 2011 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Sleep; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 15007 - Posted: 02.15.2011

By MARC E. AGRONIN, M.D. The woman described the sensation as a delicate flicker, like a moth trapped in a small gauze bag. She ran her slender fingers repeatedly over the spot in her slightly distended abdomen and said, “Doctor, right here.” Sometimes, she told me, the flicker gave way to a more forceful kick that rippled beneath her hand and then spread like a warm tide over her body. She felt contented and soothed as she imagined the baby growing inside. I was tempted to smile, but I kept still. An actual pregnancy would have been international news: the woman was 83 years old, recovering from a hip fracture and pneumonia. But her delusion was not unique. Indeed, our nursing home was having something of a baby boom. Just the day before, another woman who had recently suffered a stroke insisted that she had given birth to twin boys, who were now crying in the adjacent nursery. I reminded her that she was 90, but my words were no match for the force of her belief. She looked at me blankly and called again for her babies. Her husband, distraught, begged me to consider some pharmacologic remedy. But I was struck not by any mental suffering on the woman’s part, but by the opposite. In the face of terrible losses and confusion, her mind had found refuge in imaginary children. Their coos and cries brought comfort and hope. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke; Attention
Link ID: 15006 - Posted: 02.15.2011

By BENEDICT CAREY In recent years, many psychiatrists have come to believe that the last, best chance for some people with severe and intractable mental problems is psychosurgery, an experimental procedure in which doctors operate directly on the brain. Hundreds of people have undergone brain surgery for psychiatric problems, most in experimental trials, with some encouraging results. In 2009, the government approved one surgical technique for certain severe cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or O.C.D. For the first time since frontal lobotomy fell into disrepute in the 1950s, surgery for behavior problems seemed back on the road to the medical mainstream. But now some of the field’s most prominent scientists are saying, “Not so fast.” In a paper in the current issue of the journal Health Affairs, these experts say approving the surgery for O.C.D. was a mistake — and a potentially costly one. They argue that the surgery has not been sufficiently tested, that neither its long-term effectiveness nor its side effects are well known and that even calling it “therapy” raises people’s hopes well beyond what is scientifically supportable. “We’re not against the operation, we just want to see it tested adequately before it’s called a therapy,” said the paper’s lead author, Dr. Joseph J. Fins, chief of medical ethics at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. “With the legacy of psychosurgery, it’s important that we don’t misrepresent things as therapy when they’re not.” Doctors who run programs offering the operation strongly object. “These patients are very capable of making informed decisions based on our experience with the surgery,” said Dr. Wayne K. Goodman, chairman of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, “and I would not want to deprive them of the option, any more than I would deny someone with AIDS access to a promising therapy that has not been established yet. Their life has been so destroyed by O.C.D. that they might contemplate suicide” if the surgery were not available. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Link ID: 15005 - Posted: 02.15.2011