By Laura Sanders The polite term for what Alzheimer’s disease does to the brain is “neurodegeneration.” In reality, it’s more like violent, indiscriminate devastation. Alzheimer’s scrambles communication channels, incites massive inflammation and demolishes entire brain regions as once plump cells shrivel and die, burying memories in the wreckage. As the attack intensifies, Alzheimer’s gradually strips away a person’s mind, and ultimately the cognitive abilities that permit a conversation with a loved one, a smile or a taste of food. A couple of decades ago, some researchers thought they knew the root cause of this brain invasion — dangerous buildups of a protein called amyloid-beta. Get rid of these big, sticky globs and cure the disease, the reasoning went. But in recent years, a deeper understanding of the disease, along with a few disappointing clinical trials, has challenged long-held assumptions and forced a reevaluation of this strategy. Many researchers are convinced that A-beta is still a key target. A litany of damning evidence from genetics, pathology reports and lab experiments makes that case. Yet recent results show that A-beta is not the same foe it was originally thought to be. Smaller pieces of A-beta — not the large plaques that were formerly indicted — are likely to be malicious, capable of destroying nerve cell connections, several new studies show. Other data coming from sophisticated imaging techniques may illuminate how, when and where A-beta accumulates in the brain, and how this buildup might relate to diminished mental powers. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15049 - Posted: 02.26.2011

By PAM BELLUCK In the Oscar-nominated movie “The King’s Speech,” King George VI begins stuttering at 4 and struggles with it throughout his life. But he rarely talks like the stereotypical stutterer, Porky Pig, rapidly repeating letter sounds; usually the king has trouble getting sounds out from the get-go, blocked by sputtering pauses. His stutter is aggravated by stressful situations, like confronting his brother or addressing the public. He speaks better when playing with his daughters, singing words or inserting profanity, or when music blaring in his ears keeps him from hearing himself. These are complicated symptoms, but experts say these details, devised by a screenwriter who stuttered, mirror many aspects of actual stuttering. In that complexity are clues to this often devastating disorder’s cause, say scientists who are starting to untangle the underpinnings of stuttering in hopes of finding better treatment. Dispelling longstanding misconceptions that the underlying causes of stuttering are language problems or psychological problems like anxiety or trauma, researchers say stuttering is really a speech-production problem: a snag in the cascade of steps that our brains and bodies undertake to move the proper muscles to produce words. “People who stutter have motor difficulties in producing fluent speech,” said Luc De Nil, a speech-language pathologist at the University of Toronto. “They don’t have difficulty developing words or syntax, although they may process language differently. They have difficulty with efficient coordination of motor movements, and speech is such a high-demand fine-motor skill that requires extremely fast sequencing and timing.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 15048 - Posted: 02.26.2011

By Linda Carroll With disturbing before and after photos of drug users’ faces, a new anti-drug campaign may succeed where others have failed, grabbing teens’ attentions by appealing to their vanity. The pairs of mug shots, which graphically display the damage drugs can do to the face, were collected by the sheriff’s office in Multnomah County, Ore. Faces that were normal — even attractive — in initial photos, shot when addicts were first arrested, metamorphose over years, and sometimes just months, into gaunt, pitted, even toothless wrecks. The photos are part of a 48-minute documentary called “From Drugs to Mugs,” created by Deputy Bret King. King hopes that the documentary, which is available on a DVD along with a CD of mug shots, will help scare kids straight by showing them concrete evidence of damage that can occur within months from using meth, heroin or cocaine. “The thinking is that this will give kids a tangible image of what can happen if they get involved in using hard drugs,” King says. “We did want to appeal to their sense of vanity.” King understands the power of that teen vanity. “I remember in high school you had to have the right clothes, the right shoes, the right look,” he says. Perhaps the most stunning feature of the photos is how quickly the face is damaged. © 2011 msnbc.com.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15047 - Posted: 02.26.2011

By MARIA CHENG LONDON — You are awake, aware and probably unable to move or talk — but you are not necessarily unhappy, says the largest study of locked-in syndrome ever conducted. A surprising number of patients with the condition say they are happy, despite being paralyzed and having to communicate mainly by moving their eyes. Most cases are caused by major brain damage, often sustained in traumatic accidents. As part of the study — published in the online journal BMJ Open on Wednesday, Dr. Steven Laureys of the Coma Science Group at the University Hospital of Liege in Belgium and colleagues sent questionnaires to 168 members of the French Association for Locked-in Syndrome, asking them about their medical history, their emotional state and views on euthanasia. Sixty-five patients used a scale to indicate their sense of well-being, with 47 saying they were happy and 18 unhappy. They were also asked a variety of questions about their lives, including their ability to get around or participate in social functions, or if they had ever considered euthanasia. Only a handful of patients said they often had suicidal thoughts. The patients responded to questions largely by blinking. Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, said of the results: "We cannot and should not presume to know what it must be like to be in one of these conditions... Many patients can find happiness in ways that we simply cannot imagine," he said via e-mail. He was not linked to the study. Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15046 - Posted: 02.24.2011

By Matt Walker Capuchin monkeys have what at first glance appears to be an odd habit: they urinate onto their hands then rub their urine over their bodies into their fur. Now scientists think they know why the monkeys "urine wash" in this way. A new study shows that the brains of female tufted capuchins become more active when they smell the urine of sexually mature adult males. That suggests males wash with their urine to signal their availability and attractiveness to females. Details of the finding are published in the American Journal of Primatology. A number of New World monkey species, including mantled howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys and the few species of capuchins, regularly "urine wash", urinating into the palm of the hand, then vigorously rubbing the urine into the feet and hindquarters. Several hypotheses have been put forward as to why they do it, including that it may somehow help maintain body temperature or allow other monkeys to better identify an individual by smell. Most studies into the behaviour have been inconclusive. "But one study reported that when being solicited by a female, adult males increased their rate of urine-washing," said Dr Kimberley Phillips, a primatologist at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, US. BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 15045 - Posted: 02.24.2011

by Greg Miller Only a small minority of people who fall victim to a violent attack or witness a bloody accident suffer the recurring nightmares, hypervigilance, and other symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Women seem to be twice as susceptible as men, but otherwise researchers know virtually nothing about who is most at risk or why. Now a study has linked a genetic mutation and blood levels of a particular peptide—a compound made from a short string of the same building blocks that make up proteins—to the severity of PTSD symptoms in women. The finding could lead to tests to identify people who may need extra help after a traumatic event. In the new study, researchers led by Kerry Ressler, a psychiatrist and molecular neurobiologist at Emory University in Atlanta, focused on a peptide thought to play a role in cells' response to stress: pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP). The team measured levels of PACAP in the blood of 64 patients who volunteered for their study at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. The vast majority of volunteers were from poor neighborhoods in the city, and Ressler says more than 90% reported having witnessed or suffered from a traumatic event such as gun violence or physical or sexual assault in the past. The researchers found a correlation between PACAP levels and scores on a standard scale of PTSD symptoms in women—but no such correlation in men. In a second group of 74 women, the researchers found a similar correlation between PACAP levels and symptom severity. Ressler estimates that with all else being equal, women with high PACAP levels are up to five times as likely as women with low levels to have symptoms severe enough to meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Stress; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 15044 - Posted: 02.24.2011

Scientists are eyeing a rare genetic glitch for clues to improved treatments for some people with schizophrenia (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia/index.shtml) — even though they found the mutation in only one third of 1 percent of patients. In the study, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, schizophrenia patients were 14 times more likely than controls to harbor multiple copies of a gene on Chromosome 7. The mutations were in the gene for VIPR2, the receptor for vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) — a chemical messenger known to play a role in brain development. An examination of patients' blood confirmed that they had overactive VIP activity. Discovery of the same genetic abnormality in even a small group of patients buoys hopes for progress in a field humbled by daunting complexity in recent years. The researchers’ previous studies (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2008/rates-of-rare-mutations-soar-three-to-four-times-higher-in-schizophrenia.shtml) had suggested that the brain disorder that affects about 1 percent of adults might, in many cases, be rooted in different genetic causes in each affected individual, complicating prospects for cures. "Genetic testing for duplications of the VIP receptor could enable early detection of a subtype of patients with schizophrenia, and the receptor could also potentially become a target for development of new treatments," explained Jonathan Sebat, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Diego, who led the research team. "The growing number of such rare duplications and deletions found in schizophrenia suggests that what we have been calling a single disorder may turn out, in part, to be a constellation of multiple rare diseases."

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15043 - Posted: 02.24.2011

By TARA PARKER-POPE Researchers from the National Institutes of Health have found that less than an hour of cellphone use can speed up brain activity in the area closest to the phone antenna, raising new questions about the health effects of low levels of radiation emitted from cellphones. The researchers, led by Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, urged caution in interpreting the findings because it is not known whether the changes, which were seen in brain scans, have any meaningful effect on a person’s overall health. But the study, published Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is among the first and largest to document that the weak radio-frequency signals from cellphones have the potential to alter brain activity. “The study is important because it documents that the human brain is sensitive to the electromagnetic radiation that is emitted by cellphones,” Dr. Volkow said. “It also highlights the importance of doing studies to address the question of whether there are — or are not — long-lasting consequences of repeated stimulation, of getting exposed over five, 10 or 15 years.” Although preliminary, the findings are certain to reignite a debate about the safety of cellphones. A few observational studies have suggested a link between heavy cellphone use and rare brain tumors, but the bulk of the available scientific evidence shows no added risk. Major medical groups have said that cellphones are safe, but some top doctors, including the former director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center and prominent neurosurgeons, have urged the use of headsets as a precaution. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 15042 - Posted: 02.24.2011

By THE NEW YORK TIMES Dr. Russell Barkley, clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina, responds. Perhaps most frustrating to me is that some days I am completely “on” and “in the zone,” whereas other days, I can’t even buy my own attention, let alone anyone else’s. Are such drastic fluctuations common in A.D.D/A.D.H.D. patients? TK, Atlanta Dr. Barkley responds: A.D.H.D. symptoms do vary in different situations, as well as from day to day. The daily fluctuations may be related to the various activities one is doing on any given day. If the tasks required on a specific day demand lots of self-control and organization as well as time management and persistence, then those with A.D.H.D. will generally report that their symptoms are worse that day. If, on the other hand, it is a vacation or weekend day and they could do more of the things they enjoyed, they often report that their symptoms were less pronounced that day. People with A.D.H.D. tend to report less difficulty with their symptoms when they are in novel situations, are engaged in one-on-one interactions, are doing something they enjoy, are able to move about more while doing the activity, and do not have to do a lot of planning and preparation for the situation at hand. Of course, in the opposite circumstances, those with A.D.H.D. tend to report considerable trouble, especially in situations that demand self-restraint, time management, preparation and organization, and controlling their emotions more than usual. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD; Attention
Link ID: 15041 - Posted: 02.24.2011

Daniel Cressey In the past five years animal-rights activists have perpetrated a string of violent attacks. In February 2008, the husband of a breast-cancer biologist in Santa Cruz, California, was physically assaulted at the front door of their home. In the same month, the biomedical research institute at Hasselt University in Diepenbeek, Belgium, was set on fire. In the summer of 2009, activists desecrated graves belonging to the family of Daniel Vasella, then chief executive of the pharmaceutical company Novartis, based in Basel, Switzerland, and torched his holiday home. A poll of nearly 1,000 biomedical scientists, conducted by Nature, reveals the widespread impact of animal-rights activism. Extreme attacks are rare, and there does not seem to have been any increase in the rate of their incidence in the past few years, but almost one-quarter of respondents said that they or someone they know has been affected negatively by activism. More than 90% of respondents agreed that the use of animals in research is essential, but the poll also highlights mixed feelings on the issue. Nearly 16% of those conducting animal research said that they have had misgivings about it, and although researchers overwhelmingly feel free to discuss these concerns with colleagues, many seem less at ease with doing so in public. More than 70% said that the polarized nature of the debate makes it difficult to voice a nuanced opinion on the subject, and little more than one-quarter said that their institutions offer training and assistance in communicating broadly about the importance of animal research (see 'Assessing the threats'). © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 15040 - Posted: 02.24.2011

By LAURAN NEERGAARD WASHINGTON — Call them brain pacemakers, tiny implants that hold promise for fighting tough psychiatric diseases — if scientists can figure out just where in all that gray matter to put them. Deep brain stimulation, or DBS, has proved a powerful way to block the tremors of Parkinson's disease. Blocking mental illness isn't nearly as easy a task. But a push is on to expand research into how well these brain stimulators tackle the most severe cases of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette's syndrome — to know best how to use them before too many doctors and patients clamor to try. "It's not a light switch," cautions Dr. Michael Okun of the University of Florida. Unlike with tremor patients, the psychiatric patients who respond to DBS tend to improve gradually, sometimes to their frustration. And just because the tics of Tourette's fade or depression lightens doesn't mean patients can abandon traditional therapy. They also need help learning to function much as recipients of hip replacements undergo physical therapy, says Dr. Helen Mayberg of Emory University. "Once your brain is returned to you, now you have to learn to use it," she told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Copyright 2011 The Associated Press

Keyword: Depression; Tourettes
Link ID: 15039 - Posted: 02.22.2011

by Ferris Jabr People who are relatively ambivalent about which hand they use may also have moods that are more susceptible to suggestion. So says Ruth Propper at Montclair State University, New Jersey, and colleagues, who discovered that "inconsistent-handers" – those who favour neither their right nor left hand – are more easily persuaded to feel a certain way than consistent right-handers. Almost 90 per cent of the world's population remains loyal to the right hand, whether brushing their teeth, flipping through TV channels or whipping up some brownies. The remaining 10 per cent is divided between people who consistently prefer the left hand and those who switch between right and left. To see whether handedness had any relationship to emotional stability, Propper attempted to influence the moods of inconsistent-handers and right-handed individuals by asking them think happy, sad or anxious thoughts while listening to different kinds of classical music. Inconstant moods Proper found that inconsistent-handers not only reported that as soon as they walked into the lab they had more negative feelings, suggesting their moods were more immediately influenced by their surroundings, but were also far more likely to report slipping into a new mood during the experiment. The right-handers proved more resistant to suggestion, reporting less flux in emotion. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Laterality; Emotions
Link ID: 15038 - Posted: 02.22.2011

US researchers defended animal testing, telling a small group at one of the biggest science conferences in the United States that not doing animal research would be unethical and cost human lives. The researchers, who are or have been involved in animal research, told a symposium at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that testing on animals has led to "dramatic developments in research that have improved and affected the quality of human life." "To not do animal testing would mean that we would not be able to bring treatments and interventions and cures in a timely way. And what that means is people would die," Stuart Zola of Emory University, which is home to the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, told AFP after the symposium. Treatments for diseases such as diabetes and polio were made possible through animal research, the researchers said, and animals are currently being used in hepatitis-, HIV- and stem cell-related research, among others. But animal rights activists continue to bring pressure on laboratories that use animals to develop drugs and vaccines, urging them to stop the practice and use other means to develop the next wonder drug, treatment or cure. Animal rights activists also insist they will never use medications developed through animal testing, but the researchers said they probably already have done. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 15037 - Posted: 02.22.2011

By SINDYA N. BHANOO The part of the brain thought to be responsible for processing visual text may not require vision at all, researchers report in the journal Current Biology. This region, known as the visual word form area, processes words when people with normal vision read, but researchers found that it is also activated when the blind read using Braille. “It doesn’t matter if people are reading with their eyes or by their hands,” said Amir Amedi, a neuroscientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the study’s authors. “They are processing words.” The research counters the textbook belief that the brain is a sensory organ, in which various regions govern activities of the different senses, like sight, sound and touch. Instead, Dr. Amedi said, the brain is a task machine. “What we suggest is that what this area is doing is building the shape of the words, even though we call it the visual word form area,” he said. Dr. Amedi and his colleagues ran functional M.R.I. scans on eight adults with congenital blindness as they read using Braille. He and his colleagues belong to a small community of neuroscientists who are trying to demonstrate that the brain’s regions are multisensory. Although the theory has not become mainstream, it has been gaining acceptance in the past decade. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15036 - Posted: 02.22.2011

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D. WASHINGTON — Ron Reagan’s new memoir, “My Father at 100,” has touched off sensational headlines with its suggestion that President Ronald Reagan might have begun showing hints of Alzheimer’s disease while still in the White House. But in two interviews this month, the younger Mr. Reagan said he never meant to suggest that his father had dementia before leaving office in 1989. And he graciously took the blame for not being more explicit in a passage that described a few personal observations along with comments from the former president’s doctors. A “rather small section of the book has attracted outsize attention,” he said in a telephone interview from Seattle, where he lives. All he meant, he continued, was that the amyloid plaque characteristic of Alzheimer’s can start forming years before it leads to dementia. The former president’s diagnosis was made in 1993, four years after he left office. “Given what we know about the disease,” his son told me, “I don’t know how you could say that the disease wasn’t likely present in him during the presidency.” Had it been stated that way, the assertion about Alzheimer’s would have stirred little if any debate. Still, the issue is important for anyone — including candidates for office — because of the difficulty of distinguishing the initial symptoms of Alzheimer’s from, say, simple forgetfulness. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 15035 - Posted: 02.22.2011

By JOHN TIERNEY The 21-year-old woman was carefully trained not to flirt with anyone who came into the laboratory over the course of several months. She kept eye contact and conversation to a minimum. She never used makeup or perfume, kept her hair in a simple ponytail, and always wore jeans and a plain T-shirt. Each of the young men thought she was simply a fellow student at Florida State University participating in the experiment, which ostensibly consisted of her and the man assembling a puzzle of Lego blocks. But the real experiment came later, when each man rated her attractiveness. Previous research had shown that a woman at the fertile stage of her menstrual cycle seems more attractive, and that same effect was observed here — but only when this woman was rated by a man who wasn’t already involved with someone else. The other guys, the ones in romantic relationships, rated her as significantly less attractive when she was at the peak stage of fertility, presumably because at some level they sensed she then posed the greatest threat to their long-term relationships. To avoid being enticed to stray, they apparently told themselves she wasn’t all that hot anyway. This experiment was part of a new trend in evolutionary psychology to study “relationship maintenance.” Earlier research emphasized how evolution primed us to meet and mate: how men and women choose partners by looking for cues like facial symmetry, body shape, social status and resources. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 15034 - Posted: 02.22.2011

By Laura Sanders WASHINGTON — A panel of neuroscientists describing their basic research on how the brain work were called out on February 20 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Though the work ranged from preliminary studies on the neural networks of songbirds to how humans recognize their bodies, at some point during each presentation, each scientist made mention of the potential medical benefits of his or her work. At the end of all the presentations, session moderator Story Landis of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., pointed this out, calling attention to what may have been an unconscious desire to package their data in disease, and so perhaps funding-friendly, terms. “I was struck that all the speakers justify the science that they were doing in the context of human disease, even David [Clayton], who works on archetypal model systems — songbirds — chose or felt obligated to say something about alpha-synuclein and Parkinson’s disease,” she said. “I would be interested in challenging the speakers: Do we have to justify what neuroscientists do in a context of disease, or can we make a sufficiently compelling argument for its intrinsic interest and excitement of neuroscience without having to do that?” David Clayton, a neuroscientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, treaded carefully between the two answers by pointing out that while basic research is valuable, scientists can’t lose sight of what taxpayers are getting for their money: “Understanding how the brain works — that’s the grand challenge — doesn’t exclusively have human medical context,” he said. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 15033 - Posted: 02.22.2011

High levels of cholesterol do not predict the risk of stroke in women, according to researchers in Denmark. They did detect an increased risk in men, but only when cholesterol was at almost twice the average level. The report in Annals of Neurology recommends using a different type of fat in the blood, non-fasting triglycerides, to measure the risk. The Stroke Association said triglyceride tests needed to become routine to reduce the risk of stroke. A total of 150,000 people have a stroke in the UK each year. Most are ischemic strokes, in which a clot in an artery disrupts the brain's blood supply. The research followed 13,951 men and women, who took part in the Copenhagen City Heart Study. During the 33-year study, 837 men and 837 women had strokes. They reported that the cholesterol levels in women were not associated with stroke, while there was only an association in men with levels higher than 9mmol/litre. The average in UK men is 5.5. BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Stroke; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 15032 - Posted: 02.21.2011

By Steve Connor, Science Editor The mystery of why some children begin to stutter in the first few years of life, and never fully recover from the speech impediment, may soon be solved with the creation of the world’s first “stuttering” mouse. Scientists have generated laboratory mice with the same genetic mutations believed to be involved in triggering the speech disorder in humans in the hope that the genetically engineered animals will provide new insights into understanding and treating the condition in people. The mice are currently undergoing tests to determine whether their high-pitched calls, which cannot be heard by the human ear, display any characteristic signs that could be linked with the mutations inserted into their DNA. The researchers believe that the prospect of creating stuttering laboratory mice could revolutionise research into the human condition because it would allow scientists to make detailed studies of the chemical changes within the brain cells of individuals with a stutter. Although not all stuttering is caused by genes alone, scientists have shown that a sizeable proportion of people who suffer from a stutter are likely to have inherited genetic mutations that predispose them to developing the condition, which usually begins between the ages of three or four. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Language; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15031 - Posted: 02.21.2011

By ANDREW POLLACK HILLSBORO, Ore. — Like many these days, Shiva sits around too much, eating rich, fatty foods and sipping sugary drinks. He has the pot belly to prove it, one that nearly touches the floor — when he’s on all fours, that is. At 45 pounds, Shiva is twice his normal weight and carries much of it in his belly. He can eat all the pellets he wants and snack on peanut butter, but gets barely any exercise. More Photos » Shiva belongs to a colony of monkeys who have been fattened up to help scientists study the twin human epidemics of obesity and diabetes. The overweight monkeys also test new drugs aimed at treating those conditions. “We are trying to induce the couch-potato style,” said Kevin L. Grove, who directs the “obese resource” at the Oregon National Primate Research Center here. “We believe that mimics the health issues we face in the United States today.” The corpulent primates serve as useful models, experts say, because they resemble humans much more than laboratory rats do, not only physiologically but in some of their feeding habits. They tend to eat when bored, even when they are not really hungry. And unlike human subjects who are notorious for fudging their daily calorie or carbohydrate counts, a caged monkey’s food intake is much easier for researchers to count and control. “Nonhuman primates don’t lie to you,” said Dr. Grove, who is a neuroscientist. “We know exactly how much they are eating.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15030 - Posted: 02.21.2011