by David Grimm, SAN DIEGO—Are dolphins as smart as people? And if so, shouldn't we be treating them a bit better than we do now? Those were the topics of discussion at a session on the ethical and policy implications of dolphin intelligence here today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW). First up, just how smart are dolphins? Researchers have been exploring the question for three decades, and the answer, it turns out, is pretty darn smart. In fact, according to panelist Lori Marino, an expert on cetacean neuroanatomy at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, they may be Earth's second smartest creature (next to humans, of course). Marino bases her argument on studies of the dolphin brain. Bottlenose dolphins have bigger brains than humans (1600 grams versus 1300 grams), and they have a brain-to-body-weight ratio greater than great apes do (but lower than humans). "They are the second most encephalized beings on the planet," says Marino. But it's not just size that matters. Dolphins also have a very complex neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for problem solving, self awareness, and variety of other traits we associate with human intelligence. And researchers have found gangly neurons called Von Economo neurons, which in humans and apes have been linked to emotions, social cognition, and even theory of mind—the ability to sense what others are thinking. Overall, said Marino, "dolphin brains stack up quite well to human brains." © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Intelligence; Animal Rights
Link ID: 13793 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Erin Allday, Chronicle Staff Writer Regardless of whether "Avatar" wins the best picture Oscar next month, 3-D technology seems to be here to stay - and the people who produce that technology should be taking steps now to make it comfortable to watch, doctors say. Even the most modern, realistic 3-D technology can cause vision fatigue after extended viewing, according to a UC Berkeley optometrist who has studied how people see in 3-D, both in real life and in movie theaters. The good news is that the people making movies these days are working closely with doctors and other vision experts to make sure the entertainment is easy on the eyes. "The message is definitely getting out that we have to do some things to help people have a good experience," said Martin Banks, a professor of optometry at UC Berkeley. In real life, objects appear naturally in 3-D because our two eyes see two slightly different images that the brain forms into one central view. The same concept works with 3-D technology, in that two images are flashed at us - one for the left eye and one for the right eye. The 3-D glasses viewers wear help distinguish which image is meant for which eye. But with 3-D technology, images may seem to appear in front of the screen, or at a distance beyond the screen, and the potential for eye fatigue comes from the brain trying to figure out where to focus the eyes. We're used to focusing on something exactly where we perceive it to be - hold your finger in front of your face, and it quickly comes into focus. In a 3-D movie, if a hand appears to reach toward us, our brain has to figure out that it needs to focus on the image of a hand on the screen, not the image in front of our face. © 2010 Hearst Communications Inc.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 13792 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Spotting athletes who are still unfit to return to action days or weeks after a blow to the head could be made simpler by a new test. The check, devised by University of Michigan scientists, looks for sluggish reaction times. Those too slow to catch a falling object - a weighted cylinder - are likely to have concussion. A UK expert warned athletes should expect a three-week layoff after concussion. Minor head injuries are part and parcel of many of the most popular sports in the UK, particularly contact sports such as rugby. Many of these concussions go undetected by the player or their coaches. And even when spotted, there is some uncertainty as to when the player should be allowed to compete again. The after-effects can linger for several days, even after other more obvious symptoms such as headaches, dizziness and confusion have abated. The Michigan test involved 209 young male and female footballers and wrestlers. They were asked to catch the weighted cylinder when it was dropped by the coach, and their speed of response was recorded. Then, during the season, if any of them suffered a concussion, the test was repeated a few days afterwards. Seven of the athletes had a longer reaction time - on average 15% longer. Dr James Eckner, who devised the test, said: "Because of its simplicity and low cost, this test may work well with youth athletes, where there is limited access to computerised testing of reaction time." He will showcase his work at the American Academy of Neurology's 62nd annual meeting in Toronto in April. (C)BBC

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 13791 - Posted: 02.20.2010

LONDON - When it comes to the placebo effect, it really may be mind over matter, a new analysis suggests. In a review of recent research, international experts say there is increasing evidence that fake treatments, or placebos, have an actual biological effect in the body. The doctor-patient relationship, plus the expectation of recovery, may sometimes be enough to change a patient’s brain, body and behavior, experts write. The review of previous research on placebos was published online Friday in Lancet, the British medical journal. “It’s not that placebos or inert substances help,” said Linda Blair, a Bath-based psychologist and spokeswoman for the British Psychological Society. Blair was not linked to the research. “It’s that people’s belief in inert substances help.” While doctors have long recognized that placebos can help patients feel better, they weren’t sure if the treatments sparked any physical changes. In the Lancet review, researchers cite studies where patients with Parkinson’s disease were given dummy pills. That led their brains to release dopamine, a feel-good chemical, and also resulted in other changes in brain activity. “When you think you’re going to get a drug that helps, your brain reacts as if it’s getting relief,” said Walter Brown, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown and Tufts University. “But we don’t know how that thought that you’re going to get better actually translates into something happening in the brain.” © 2010 The Associated Press

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Parkinsons
Link ID: 13790 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By SINDYA N. BHANOO If an expectant mother knew that dangerous creatures lurked around her, and knew also that she wouldn’t be around to take care of her young, she might be stressed. And if she had a way to warn her young before they were born, surely she would. Human mothers cannot do this, to the best of our knowledge. But pregnant crickets, it appears, do have the ability to forewarn. This is especially useful since crickets abandon their young after birth. Researchers from the University of South Carolina Upstate and Indiana State University placed pregnant crickets in an enclosure where they were stalked, but not eaten, by a wolf spider, whose fangs had been coated with wax to protect the crickets. The young of the spider-exposed mothers turned out to be more predator-savvy than those with mothers who were not exposed to the wolf spider; they stayed hidden longer, and were more likely to freeze when they encountered spider feces or spider silk. In a second experiment, the researchers placed the juvenile crickets in an arena with a starving wolf spider with fully functioning fangs. Eventually, the spider got all the crickets, but the young born from spider-exposed mothers lasted longer in the arena of death. The research was published last month in The American Naturalist. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13789 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Robert Emery and Jim Coan When people have their feelings hurt, what is actually happening inside the body to cause the physical pain in the chest? —Josh Ceddia, Melbourne, Australia Terms such as “heartache” and “gut wrenching” are more than mere metaphors: they describe the experience of both physical and emotional pain. When we feel heartache, for example, we are experiencing a blend of emotional stress and the stress-induced sensations in our chest—muscle tightness, increased heart rate, abnormal stomach activity and shortness of breath. In fact, emotional pain involves the same brain regions as physical pain, suggesting the two are inextricably connected. But how do emotions trigger physical sensations? Scientists do not know, but recently pain researchers uncovered a possible pathway from mind to body. According to a 2009 study from the University of Arizona and the University of Maryland, activity in a brain region that regulates emotional reactions called the anterior cingulate cortex helps to explain how an emotional insult can trigger a biological cascade. During a particularly stressful experience, the anterior cingulate cortex may respond by increasing the activity of the vagus nerve—the nerve that starts in the brain stem and connects to the neck, chest and abdomen. When the vagus nerve is overstimulated, it can cause pain and nausea. Heartache is not the only way emotional and physical pain intersect in our brain. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Emotions; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 13788 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Aria Pearson You may hate forgetting things, but healthy brains need to be able to overwrite old memories. Now a protein responsible for forgetting has been identified in flies, and it's been used to speed up and slow down the erasure of painful memories. It is still unknown if the protein plays a similar role in people. But the finding is intriguing because the natural process of memory decay remains shrouded in mystery. "We know very, very little about what causes normal forgetting," says James McGaugh, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the new work. If the protein does play a similar role in humans, it could lead to new techniques for either enhancing or erasing memory. Until now approaches to erasing unwanted memories have largely focussed on interfering with the laying-down of memories, rather than our natural ability to forget. After learning that some humans with cognitive disabilities have mutations in genes that control the activity of a protein called Rac, Yi Zhong and his colleagues at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York reasoned that the protein might be involved in memory. They tested this idea in fruit flies by using genetic engineering to enhance or repress the activity of Rac in the parts of the flies' brains associated with short-term memory. Then they measured how quickly the flies' memories seemed to disappear. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13787 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Carl Zimmer Fear: See also dread, panic, terror, fright, trepidation, anxiety, worry, phobia, disquietude, angst, foreboding, the creeps, the jitters, the heebie-jeebies, freaking out. Any halfway decent thesaurus will provide a long list of synonyms for fear, and yet they are not very good substitutes. No one would confuse having the creeps with being terrified. It is strange that we have so many words for fear, when fear is such a unitary, primal feeling. Perhaps all those synonyms are just linguistic inventions. Perhaps, if we looked inside our brains, we would just find plain old fear. That is certainly how things seemed in the early 1900s, when scientists began studying how we come to be scared of things. They built on Ivan Pavlov’s classic experiments on dogs, in which Pavlov would ring a bell before giving his dogs food. Eventually they learned to associate the bell with food and began to salivate in anticipation. Psychologists set up experiments to see if the same kind of learning could instill fear as well. The implicit assumption was that fear, like hunger, was a simple provoked response. In one of the most famous (and infamous) of these experiments, American psychologist John Watson decided to see if he could teach an 11-month-old baby named Albert to become scared of arbitrary things. He presented Albert with a rat, and every time the baby reached out to touch it, Watson hit a steel bar with a hammer, producing a horrendous clang. After several rounds with the rat and the bar, Watson then brought out the rat on its own. “The instant the rat was shown, the baby began to cry,” Watson wrote in a 1920 report.

Keyword: Emotions; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13786 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Greg Miller SAN DIEGO—The hormone progesterone is best known for its work in the female reproductive system, where it plays various roles in supporting pregnancy. But starting next month, it will be the focus of a phase III clinical trial for traumatic brain injury (TBI). Researchers hope an infusion of progesterone given within a few hours of a car accident or other trauma will help prevent brain damage, said the trial’s principal investigator, David Wright of Emory University in Atlanta. He described the upcoming trial here today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW). The rationale for the trial springs from a chance finding made more than a quarter of century ago. While studying the effects of head injuries in rats, Emory researcher Donald Stein noticed that females had fewer ill effects than did males. Females who were at the progesterone peak of their menstrual cycle did even better. Follow-up studies with other animals also pointed to neuroprotective effects of progesterone, which is present in both the male and the female brain. In recent years, two small clinical trials suggested that progesterone can reduce mortality and disability after TBI in people. The new trial will provide a sterner test. It aims to enroll 1140 patients at 17 centers across the United States. Each patient will receive an infusion of progesterone starting within 4 hours of his or her injury and lasting 4 days. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Stroke; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 13785 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sharon Begley | NEWSWEEK By now, it should come as no surprise when scientists discover yet another case of experience changing the brain. From the sensory information we absorb to the movements we make, our lives leave footprints on the bumps and fissures of our cortex, so much so that experiences can alter "hard-wired" brain structures. Through rehab, stroke patients can coax a region of the motor cortex on the opposite side of the damaged region to pinch-hit, restoring lost mobility; volunteers who are blindfolded for just five days can reprogram their visual cortex to process sound and touch. Still, scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture—the language we speak, the values we absorb—shapes the brain, and are rethinking findings derived from studies of Westerners. To take one recent example, a region behind the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex supposedly represents the self: it is active when we ("we" being the Americans in the study) think of our own identity and traits. But with Chinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different. The "me" circuit hummed not only when they thought whether a particular adjective described themselves, but also when they considered whether it described their mother. The Westerners showed no such overlap between self and mom. Depending whether one lives in a culture that views the self as autonomous and unique or as connected to and part of a larger whole, this neural circuit takes on quite different functions. "Cultural neuroscience," as this new field is called, is about discovering such differences. Some of the findings, as with the "me/mom" circuit, buttress longstanding notions of cultural differences. For instance, it is a cultural cliché that Westerners focus on individual objects while East Asians pay attention to context and background (another manifestation of the individualism-collectivism split). Sure enough, when shown complex, busy scenes, Asian-Americans and non-Asian--Americans recruited different brain regions. The Asians showed more activity in areas that process figure-ground relations—holistic context—while the Americans showed more activity in regions that recognize objects. © 2010 Newsweek, Inc.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Evolution
Link ID: 13784 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Being happy and staying positive may help ward off heart disease, a study suggests. US researchers monitored the health of 1,700 people over 10 years, finding the most anxious and depressed were at the highest risk of the disease. They could not categorically prove happiness was protective, but said people should try to enjoy themselves. But experts suggested the findings may be of limited use as an individual's approach to life was often ingrained. At the start of the study, which was published in the European Heart Journal, participants were assessed for emotions ranging from hostility and anxiousness to joy, enthusiasm and contentment. They were given a rating on a five-point scale to score their level of positive emotions. By the end of the analysis, some 145 had developed heart disease - fewer than one in 10. But for each rise in the happiness scale there was a 22% lower risk of developing heart disease. The team believes happier people may have better sleeping patterns, be less liable to suffer stress and be more able to move on from upsetting experiences - all of which can put physical strain on the body. Lead researcher Dr Karina Davidson admitted more research was needed into the link, but said she would still recommend that people try to develop a more positive outlook. She said all too often people just waited for their "two weeks of vacation to have fun" when instead they should seek enjoyment each day. If you enjoy reading novels, but never get around to it, commit to getting 15 minutes or so of reading in. If walking or listening to music improves you mood, get those activities in your schedule. Essentially spending a few minutes each day truly relaxed and enjoying yourself is certainly good for your mental health and may improve your physical health as well." (C)BBC

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 13783 - Posted: 02.18.2010

Amber Dance Scientists in the United States must publicly discuss the merits of animal research if they are to win over the public and neutralize the threat from activists. That was the view of animal-research supporters at a landmark panel discussion yesterday, which saw them come face to face with anti-vivisectionists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In recent years, University of California scientists have faced threats of violence from animal-rights activists, with firebomb incidents at the Los Angeles and Santa Cruz campuses. But Colin Blakemore, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, UK, and a vocal supporter of animal research who has faced numerous attacks from activists, said that scientists in the United Kingdom have made progress in dealing with the problem by engaging with the media and the public. "The only way to breakthroughs is to have the courage to be open," Blakemore told Nature. But examples of such dialogue have been few and far between in the United States. "Scientists for a long time have not fulfilled society's expectations of being fully engaged about what they're doing," said J. David Jentsch, a UCLA neuroscientist and founder of the UCLA Pro-Test for Science animal-research advocacy group, before the event. "We really felt the time was ripe." © 2010 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 13782 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay Is that Folgers coffee in your cup or Maxwell House? Now you no longer have to rely on your nose to tell. Researchers have developed an analyzer that can distinguish between 10 commercial brands of coffee and can even tell apart coffee beans roasted at various temperatures for different times. The advance could help growers determine within minutes whether a particular batch of coffee is just as good as the previous one or whether it's undrinkable. Researchers have been trying for years to come up with a simple way to analyze coffee. But it's no easy task. The challenge is that the aroma of roasted coffee beans consists of more than 1000 compounds that change with roasting temperatures and time. Traditional methods of chemical analysis like gas chromatography combined with mass spectrometry generally have difficulty distinguishing between compounds that are very similar to one another. And "electronic noses," an array of dyes, and other sensors that change color or chemical properties when they react with certain molecules suffer from the same drawback. Over the past decade, chemist Kenneth Suslick and colleagues at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, have refined the electronic nose approach. In the new study, they used dyes that interact strongly with other chemicals, making them more specific. They then put drops of 36 dyes on a polymer film the size of a nickel. The pigments in the dyes belonged to a range of chemical classes, including metalloporphyrins (a class of molecules which give blood and chlorophyll their distinctive colors); pH indicators; and molecules that change color with certain chemical vapors. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Robotics
Link ID: 13781 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Liz Else, associate editor Challenging a multibillion-dollar global industry is bound to be an uncomfortable mission, all the more so if you risk being accused of promoting suffering, being a denialist, or even of culpable ignorance. Few writers who take on the mental health industry can be doing it for the money or in the hopes of sales matching Peter Kramer's 1990s hit Listening to Prozac. It was Kramer who coined the phrase "cosmetic psychopharmacology" to describe a not-too-distant utopia in which drugs such as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor Prozac, normally used to treat depression, would be used to enhance or change personality. Kramer did warn of the drug's downsides (tremors, loss of libido, suicidal ideation), but the prospect of exchanging shyness, timidity and other social dysfunctions for self-assurance, gregariousness and success ensured the book's popularity. Fast-forward to 2010 and optimism about biochemical aids in the endless pursuit of happiness or as fixes for misery seems to be vanishing like the morning mist. Writers continue to take the mental health industry apart, big genetics still fails to nail "genes for" mental illness in any important sense, and the deadline for a new edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has slipped a year amid ugly rows and claims that tens of millions of dollars could be spent on unnecessary drugs should new diseases with no clear scientific foundation be included in the DSM. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 13780 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Cristen Conger Chronic insomniacs losing out on sleep may also be missing brain matter. For the first time, brain imaging has linked chronic insomnia to lower gray matter density in areas that regulate the brain's ability to make decisions and to rest. The research could lead to new treatment plans for people who struggle with sleeplessness. "The findings predict that chronic insomnia sufferers may have compromised capacities to evaluate the affective value of stimuli," said Ellemarijie Altena, lead author of the study from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. "This could have consequences for other cognitive processes, notably decision-making." The study, published in Biological Psychiatry, compared the white and gray matter volumes of 24 older, chronic insomnia patients to 13 normal sleepers, and controlled for physical and psychiatric disorders that could also alter brain densities. Severe insomniacs exhibited the most extensive density loss, regardless of how long they had suffered from the disorder. However, the researchers are not yet able to pin down whether sleeplessness precedes gray matter loss or the other way around. © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Sleep; Brain imaging
Link ID: 13779 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway A GENE variant that ups your risk of developing Alzheimer's disease in old age may not be all bad. It seems that young people with the variant tend to be smarter, more educated and have better memories than their peers. The discovery may improve the variant's negative image (see "Yes or no"). It also suggests why the variant is common despite its debilitating effects in old age. Carriers of the variant may have an advantage earlier in life, allowing them to reproduce and pass on the variant before its negative effects kick in. "From an evolutionary perspective it makes sense," says Duke Han at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. The "allele" in question is epsilon 4, a version of the apolipoprotein E gene (APOE). Having one copy increases the risk of developing Alzheimer's at least fourfold compared with people who have other forms of the gene. A person with two copies has up to 20 times the risk. One big clue that epsilon 4 might be beneficial emerged several years ago, when Han's team scanned the APOE genes of 78 American soldiers. All had suffered traumatic brain injuries, many while serving in Iraq. Sixteen had at least one copy of epsilon 4. Han's team expected to find that these carriers would be in worse cognitive shape than their counterparts with different versions of APOE, given previous studies that showed elderly people with epsilon 4 fare worse after head injury. But the opposite was true: soldiers with the epsilon 4 allele had better memory and attention spans (Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, DOI: 10.1136/jnnp.2006.108183). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13778 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Andy Coghlan, reporter Remember Rom Houben, the man thought to be in a vegetative state, who turned out to have been fully conscious and "locked in" for more than 20 years? It has now emerged that doubts that he was really communicating using residual movement in his finger and a touchscreen were spot on. "Powerlessness. Utter powerlessness. At first I was angry, then I learned to live with it." That's what Houben, brain damaged in a car accident in 1983, apparently told the world by communicating via a computer touch-screen, at least according to the original report of Houben's story in Der Spiegel in November 2009. The story attracted huge media attention, which quickly turned sour when several videos of Houben typing at the screen prompted commentators to cry foul. They pointed out that the speed of the typing, and the fact that Houben is not even looking at the keyboard at various points in the footage, suggested it was in fact the person holding his finger who was behind the messages. Now, according to a follow-up article in Der Spiegel, it seems these suspicions have been borne out. The magazine reports that Steven Laureys of the University of Liège in Belgium, who first diagnosed Houben as conscious, but dissociated himself from the communication fiasco, has carried out subsequent tests to see if Houben is capable of this kind of communication. He concludes that the speech therapist holding Houben's finger was in fact the source of the messages. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 13777 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WASHINGTON - A hormone thought to encourage bonding between mothers and their babies may foster social behavior in some adults with autism, French researchers said on Monday. They found patients who inhaled the hormone oxytocin paid more attention to expressions when looking at pictures of faces and were more likely to understand social cues in a game simulation, the researchers said in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Angela Sirigu of the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience in Lyon, who led the study, said the hormone has a therapeutic potential in adults as well as in children with autism. "For instance, if oxytocin is administered early when the diagnosis is made, we can perhaps change very early the impaired social development of autistic patients," Sirigu said in an email. Sirigu said the study focused on oxytocin because it was known to help breast-feeding mothers bond with their infants and because earlier research has shown that some children with autism have low levels of the hormone. People with Asperger's syndrome and other autism spectrum disorders often have problems with social interaction. Sirigu said oxytocin could help autism patients who have normal intellectual functions and fairly good language abilities because it improves eye contact. Copyright 2010 Reuters

Keyword: Autism; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 13776 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sandra G. Boodman Karen Hammerman could see that her son was upset, and when he told her why, she was unnerved. Adam Hammerman, then a 16-year-old sophomore at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Montgomery County, had missed a week of school because of a virus and telephoned several classmates to see what assignments he'd missed. "Something's wrong," he told his mother last May. "All my friends are mad at me. They say I've called them five times already and they're not going to tell me again." But Adam had no memory of making the calls. The incident, Karen Hammerman soon discovered, was not isolated. One morning as Adam prepared to take a shower, he screamed after seeing himself in the mirror: He said he did not remember getting a haircut the previous day. He called his mother from school to ask what time she was picking him up, then called again five minutes later to ask the same thing. "Basically it was like living with a 16-year-old Alzheimer's patient," Karen Hammerman recalled. Despite numerous tests, nearly a dozen doctors in Washington and Baltimore could find no reason for Adam's sudden and profound memory loss. "They would either tell me, 'I've never seen anything like this,' or else that he's making it up," his mother recalled. One neurologist's assistant castigated Hammerman for insisting on expensive tests for a problem that was clearly psychological. © 2010 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13775 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LAURA BEIL HOUSTON — One callous question turned Brittany Caesar into a medical pioneer: “Why do you eat so much? It’s not normal.” At that moment, she was in the Campbell Middle School cafeteria, sitting down to her usual lunch: two cheeseburgers, two orders of fries and a Coke. She knew she weighed too much. Her whole family weighed too much. But her world revolved around food, and she could not imagine any other existence. “Food was my best friend,” she said. “It was always there for me.” Somehow, her classmate’s taunt, back in 2003, wounded her in a way the usual fat jokes never had. She fled to the bathroom and wept, vowing to lose weight. Her salvation did not arrive until more than a year later when, at age 14, doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital performed a gastric bypass that left her stomach the size of an egg. On the day of surgery, she weighed 404 pounds. Ms. Caesar, now 20 years old and 175 pounds, was the first teenager to undergo a gastric bypass at Texas Children’s, but more quickly followed. Today, it maintains one of the busiest bariatric practices for adolescents in the country, performing one or two bypasses each month. Although the procedure is still considered experimental for children, it is fast becoming the next front in the battle against pediatric obesity. “I honestly believe that in 5 to 10 years you’ll see as many children getting weight-loss procedures as adults,” said Dr. Evan Nadler, co-director of the Obesity Institute at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13774 - Posted: 06.24.2010