By Katherine Harmon Problem: you’re a fungus that can only flourish at a certain temperature, humidity, location and distance from the ground but can’t do the legwork to find that perfect spot yourself. Solution: hijack an ant’s body to do the work for you—and then inhabit it. A paper, to be published in The American Naturalist’s September issue, explores the astounding accuracy with which this fungus compels ants to create its ideal home. The Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus infects Camponotus leonardi ants that live in tropical rainforest trees. Once infected, the spore-possessed ant will climb down from its normal habitat and bite down, with what the authors call a "death grip" on a leaf and then die. But the story doesn’t end there. "The death grip occurred in very precise locations," the authors write. All of the C. leonardi ants studied in Thailand’s Khao Chong Wildlife Sanctuary had chomped down on the underside of a leaf, and 98 percent had landed on a vein. Most had: a) found their way to the north side of the plant, b) chomped on a leaf about 25 centimeters above the ground, c) selected a leaf in an environment with 94 to 95 percent humidity and d) ended up in a location with temperatures between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius. The researchers called this specificity "remarkable." In other words, the fungus was transported via the zombie ant to its prime location. To see just how important this accuracy is to the fungus, the researchers identified dozens of infected ants in a small area of the forest. Some of the ants were moved to other nearby heights and locations, and others were left to sprout spores just where they had died. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 13119 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Susan Milius Karen Warkentin speaks admiringly of the eggs of red-eyed tree frogs because, for one thing, they know what’s shaking. Masses of these glistening eggs hang on leaves that dangle over tropical ponds, and the eggs stay put even when branches thrash in storms. A hungry snake biting into one end of an egg mass can make the embryos’ home dip and dance too. But at this jouncing, older embryos flee. They can’t run, but they can hatch. A sudden burst of emergency hatching sends a rain of new tadpoles into the water, often saving some 80 percent of a clutch. Pretty sophisticated for a glob of goo. It turns out that frog eggs and other embryonic blobs possess a rather advanced repertoire for coping with the earliest stages of life. Embryos can react to perils both inside their eggs and out. Even while still within their shelter, they’re learning lessons about eating. And being eaten. These and other recent findings are forcing researchers to expand their ideas of how capably and subtly these half-baked beings can act. Maybe deft dodges and finely judged trade-offs should be expected: Life for the small and underpowered is dangerous, and plenty of good embryos die young. “That creates opportunities for natural selection to shape a response,” says Warkentin, a biologist at Boston University. But there’s still the lingering old view of early life stages as clods. Warkentin says: “We think, ‘It’s a frog egg, it’s a snail embryo — what can it do?’ That’s what surprises us.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13118 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Constance Holden If you take your coffee without sugar or your pancakes without syrup, chances are you've got some European ancestry in your blood. New research reveals that people whose early relatives lived in Europe are more sensitive to sweet tastes than those whose ancestors came from other parts of the world. Scientists led by Alexey Fushan of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders in Bethesda, Maryland, asked 144 people from various ethnic backgrounds to rank the sweetness of nine solutions ranging from 0% to 4% sugar. The volunteers' sucrose sensitivity turned out to be strongly associated with two variants of a gene called TAS1R3, which plays a major role in encoding the main carbohydrate sweet taste receptor. Consulting a reference collection of DNA from 1050 people from around the world held by CEPH, the French gene database, the scientists found that most Europeans have both of the sweetness-sensing variants. The variants are less widespread in people from Asia and the Middle East and are least prevalent in Africans, the team reports in the 11 August issue of Current Biology. Co-author and geneticist Dennis Drayna says the disparity may be evolutionarily significant. "People who study diet and evolution have pointed out most of the high sugar–containing plants like sugarcane are tropical plants," he notes. "So in northerly latitudes, you have to be more sensitive to sugar to find calories." Molecular biologist Stephen Wooding of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas agrees that the difference may be adaptive. But he says the particular adaptation isn't yet clear. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Obesity
Link ID: 13117 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Laura Sanders When the monitor lizard chomped into Bryan Fry, it did more than turn his hand into a bloody mess. Besides ripping skin and severing tendons, the lizard delivered noxious venom into Fry’s body, injecting molecules that quickly thinned his blood and dilated his vessels. As the tiny toxic assassins dispersed throughout his circulatory system, they hit their targets with speed and precision, ultimately causing more blood to gush from Fry’s wound. Over millions of years, evolution has meticulously shaped these toxins into powerful weapons, and Fry was feeling the devastating consequences firsthand. “I’ve never seen arterial bleeding before, and I really don’t want to ever see it again. Especially coming out of my own arm,” says Fry, a venom researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia. To unlock the molecular secrets of venom, Fry and other researchers have pioneered a burgeoning field called venomics. With cutting-edge methods, the scientists are teasing apart and cataloging venom’s ingredients, some of which can paralyze muscles, make blood pressure plummet or induce seizures by scrambling brain signals. Researchers are also learning more about how these toxins work. Discovering venom’s tricks may allow scientists to rehabilitate these damaging molecules and convert them from destroyers to healers. Venom might be teeming with wonder drugs, for instance. After all, a perfect venom toxin works with lightning speed, remains stable for a long time and strikes its mark with surgical exactitude — attributes that drugmakers dream about. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 13116 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Melinda Wenner Your memories of high school biology class may be a bit hazy nowadays, but there are probably a few things you haven’t forgotten. Like the fact that you are a composite of your parents—your mother and father each provided you with half your genes, and each parent’s contribution was equal. Gregor Mendel, often called the father of modern genetics, came up with this concept in the late 19th century, and it has been the basis for our understanding of genetics ever since. But in the past couple of decades, scientists have learned that Mendel’s understanding was incomplete. It is true that children inherit 23 chromosomes from their mother and 23 complementary chromosomes from their father. But it turns out that genes from Mom and Dad do not always exert the same level of influence on the developing fetus. Sometimes it matters which parent you inherit a gene from—the genes in these cases, called imprinted genes because they carry an extra molecule like a stamp, add a whole new level of complexity to Mendelian inheritance. These molecular imprints silence genes; certain imprinted genes are silenced by the mother, whereas others are silenced by the father, and the result is the delicate balance of gene activation that usually produces a healthy baby. When that balance is upset, however, big problems can arise. Because most of these stamped genes influence the brain, major imprinting errors can manifest themselves as rare developmental disorders, such as Prader-Willi syndrome, which is characterized by mild mental retardation and hormonal imbalances that lead to obesity. And recently scientists have started to suspect that more subtle imprinting errors could lead to common mental illnesses such as autism, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease. A better understanding of how imprinting goes awry could provide doctors with new ways to treat or perhaps even prevent some of these disorders. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13115 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Caroline Williams The smell of the sweat you produce when terrified is not only registered by the brains of others, but changes their behaviour too, according to new research. It adds to a growing body of evidence that humans may communicate using scent in a similar way to how other animals use pheromones. Lilianne Mujica-Parodi, a cognitive neuroscientist at Stony Brook University in New York and colleagues collected sweat from the armpits of first-time tandem skydivers as they hurtled towards the earth. The smell of their sweat was wafted under the noses of volunteers as they lay in an fMRI scanner. Even though they had no idea what they were inhaling, two separate sets of volunteers showed activation of the amygdala – the area of the brain responsible for emotion-processing, plus areas involved in vision, motor control and goal-directed behaviour. Sweat produced under non-stressed conditions didn't produce this reaction. What's more, in behavioural tests, the "stress sweat" seemed to heighten people's awareness of threat, making them 43 per cent more accurate in judging whether a face was neutral or threatening. Because the study used sweat rather than its components, this is not definitive evidence that human pheromones exist, says Johan Lundstrom, a pheromone researcher at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, who was not involved in the research. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Emotions
Link ID: 13114 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By CAMILLE SWEENEY ON a recent evening, an unusual experiment took place at a lounge in downtown Manhattan. Nine blindfolded women were asked to determine, by smell alone, whether any among a group of nine men was worth pursuing. Three men had just showered using a body wash with synthesized pheromones, three had used a body wash without pheromones, and the rest had worked up a sweat and not washed at all. They then rubbed their arms on scent strips, and handed them to the women to sniff. One participant, Michelle Hotaling, 24, chose a man who had used the pheromone body wash. “In appearance and personality he was not someone I would otherwise be convinced to go out with,” she said, once her blindfold came off. “But his scent was a factor that would push my decision to say, ‘Yes.’ ” Which was just what Dial, the event’s sponsor and maker of the new “pheromone-infused” Dial for Men Magnetic Attraction Enhancing Body Wash, wanted to hear. “We don’t claim using our product you’re going to hit a home run,” said Ryan Gaspar, a brand manager. “We say, ‘We’ll get you to first base.’ ” As the science — or, as some believe, pseudo-science — of pheromones advances toward commercial applications, more manufacturers of personal-care products are dropping tinctures of synthesized pheromones into their formulas, with claims that they will boost sex appeal and confidence. The pheromone of choice for men is a family of steroids, related to testosterone, found near the axillary glands in the underarm area. For women, a commonly used compound is estratetraenol, a derivative of the sex hormone estradiol. (The patents of these synthesized hormones are proprietary, and when asked, the makers would not reveal their ingredients.) Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13113 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Bob Holmes IT IS one of the biggest mysteries in human evolution. Why did we humans evolve such big brains, making us the unrivalled rulers of the world? Some 2.5 million years ago, our ancestors' brains expanded from a mere 600 cubic centimetres to about a litre. Two new studies suggest it is no fluke that this brain boom coincided with the onset of an ice age. Cooler heads, it seems, allowed ancient human brains to let off steam and grow. Cooler heads, it seems, allowed ancient human brains to let off steam and grow For all its advantages, the modern human brain is a huge energy glutton, accounting for nearly half of our resting metabolic rate. About a decade ago, biologists David Schwartzman and George Middendorf of Howard University in Washington DC hypothesised that our modern brain could not have evolved until the Quaternary ice age started, about 2.5 million years ago. They reckoned such a large brain would have generated heat faster than it could dissipate it in the warmer climate of earlier times, but they lacked evidence to back their hypothesis. Now hints of that evidence are beginning to emerge. Climate researcher Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, modelled present-day temperature, humidity and wind conditions around the world using an Earth-systems computer model. He used these factors to predict the maximum rate at which a modern human brain can lose heat in different regions. He found that, even today, the ability to dissipate heat should restrict the activity of people in many tropical regions (Climatic Change, vol 95, p 405). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution; Intelligence
Link ID: 13112 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Torrice Add another ill effect to the negative consequences of stress. In addition to making us more irritable, forgetful, and unhealthy, stress also rearranges wiring in the brain, leading to bad decision-making, according to a new study in rats. Rats, like humans, aren't too hard to stress out. Stick them in an enclosed space or make them share a cage with a dominant comrade and the rodents get fairly unnerved. And that, researchers have found, leads to bad choices. Scientists at the University of Minho in Portugal and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, compared stressed and unstressed rats' responses to two tests. In the first test, they taught the rats to hit a lever to score one of two possible treats: a sip of a sugary solution or a food pellet. The scientists then changed the game, providing the rats with all of the snacks they wanted before giving them the option to press the lever. Satiated, the unstressed rats hit the lever significantly less. But the stressed rats continued pressing at the same rate. For the second test, the scientists trained the rodents to use two levers, one for each treat. After the rats learned the rules, the researchers picked one treat to dispense randomly, whether or not the rat hit the lever. The relaxed animals hit that treat's lever less often, while the stressed rats continued to hit both levers with equal frequency. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 13111 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Short-term complications and death rates were low following bariatric surgery to limit the amount of food that can enter the stomach, decrease absorption of food or both, according to the Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery (LABS-1). The study was funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), part of the National Institutes of Health. Results are reported in the July 30 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Less than 1 percent (0.3 percent) of patients died within 30 days of surgery, further supporting the short-term safety of bariatric surgery as a treatment for patients with extreme obesity. Bariatric surgery can have dramatic health benefits — such as improved blood sugar control or even reversal of type 2 diabetes. But it also carries serious risks, including death. The LABS-1 study aimed to evaluate the short-term safety of bariatric surgery to help doctors and patients understand the risks. "Evaluating the 30-day safety outcomes of bariatric surgery in large populations is an essential step forward," according to co-author Myrlene Staten, M.D. senior advisor for diabetes translation research at NIDDK, part of NIH. "And LABS-1 data are from all patients who had their procedure performed by a surgeon participating in the study, not from just a select few patients." Various types of bariatric surgery limit food intake, nutrient absorption or both. The major types of surgery undergone by participants in this study included laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding, laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and open Roux-en-Y gastric bypass.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 13110 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Laura Sanders Researchers have whipped up a batch of calorie-burning brown fat cells, a feat which may ultimately lead to new ways to treat obesity and metabolic disorders such as diabetes, a paper published online July 29 in Nature reports. “Brown adipose tissue is coming to the forefront of research in diabetes and obesity because its role is burning energy,” says Francesco Celi, an endocrinologist at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Md. Unlike energy-storing white fat, brown fat burns energy. Known to keep small animals and dimply babies warm in cold temperatures, brown fat has been shown recently to be present in adults (SN: 5/9/09, p. 10). This finding made researchers think it might be feasible to combat obesity by increasing the amount and activity of brown fat stores in the adult body. Researchers knew that a protein named PRDM16 was important for producing brown fat cells from pre-muscle cells called myoblasts. In the new study, Bruce Spiegelman of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass., and his colleagues found that PRDM16 requires a partner, called C/EBP-beta. Either protein on its own had no effect on mouse myoblasts in a lab dish. These myoblasts divided as usual. But when researchers increased the amount of both proteins, cells divided to create functional energy-burning brown fat cells, in addition to copies of themselves. Uncovering this method to make brown fat cells, Spiegelman says, “offers us an opportunity to play with the switch.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 13109 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY The sight was not that unusual, at least not for Mosul, Iraq, on a summer morning: a car parked on the sidewalk, facing opposite traffic, its windows rolled up tight. Two young boys stared out the back window, kindergarten age maybe, their faces leaning together as if to share a whisper. The soldier patrolling closest to the car stopped. It had to be hot in there; it was 120 degrees outside. “Permission to approach, sir, to give them some water,” the soldier said to Sgt. First Class Edward Tierney, who led the nine-man patrol that morning. “I said no — no,” Sergeant Tierney said in a telephone interview from Afghanistan. He said he had an urge to move back before he knew why: “My body suddenly got cooler; you know, that danger feeling.” The United States military has spent billions on hardware, like signal jamming technology, to detect and destroy what the military calls improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, the roadside bombs that have proved to be the greatest threat in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, where Sergeant Tierney is training soldiers to foil bomb attacks. Still, high-tech gear, while helping to reduce casualties, remains a mere supplement to the most sensitive detection system of all — the human brain. Troops on the ground, using only their senses and experience, are responsible for foiling many I.E.D. attacks, and, like Sergeant Tierney, they often cite a gut feeling or a hunch as their first clue. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Attention
Link ID: 13108 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MATT RICHTEL The first study of drivers texting inside their vehicles shows that the risk sharply exceeds previous estimates based on laboratory research — and far surpasses the dangers of other driving distractions. The new study, which entailed outfitting the cabs of long-haul trucks with video cameras over 18 months, found that when the drivers texted, their collision risk was 23 times greater than when not texting. The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which compiled the research and plans to release its findings on Tuesday, also measured the time drivers took their eyes from the road to send or receive texts. In the moments before a crash or near crash, drivers typically spent nearly five seconds looking at their devices — enough time at typical highway speeds to cover more than the length of a football field. Even though trucks take longer to stop and are less maneuverable than cars, the findings generally applied to all drivers, who tend to exhibit the same behaviors as the more than 100 truckers studied, the researchers said. Truckers, they said, do not appear to text more or less than typical car drivers, but they said the study did not compare use patterns that way. Compared with other sources of driver distraction, “texting is in its own universe of risk,” said Rich Hanowski, who oversaw the study at the institute. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 13107 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jenny Lauren Lee Over-the-counter allergy medications turn obese, diabetic mice into healthy, normal-weight mice, researchers report. The new research focuses on mast cells, immune system players critical to the inflammatory response involved in allergies. The study appears along with three other independent studies in the July 26 online Nature Medicine that show a connection between type 2 diabetes and the immune system. “Certainly the study is very exciting,” says George King of Harvard University’s Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, who was not involved in the research. “It’s the first type to identify mast cells as having a potential role in developing obesity.” Researchers from Harvard and their colleagues found that the inflammatory mast cells are as much as six times more abundant in the fat tissue of obese and diabetic humans and mice than in the fat tissue of normal-weight humans and mice. Under certain conditions (such as when a person with allergies inhales pollen), these mast cells leak inflammation-inducing molecules “like a trash bag with holes in it,” says Guo-Ping Shi, a coauthor of the study on mast cells. Anti-inflammatory drugs, such as those used in anti-allergy eye drops and nasal sprays, reduce allergic symptoms by stabilizing the mast cells, effectively putting an extra trash bag around the leaky one so inflammatory molecules can’t be released. Shi says the team was curious about whether pre-existing medicines that stabilize mast cells might also alleviate the symptoms of diabetes. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Obesity; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 13106 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tom Jackman Danny Watt once leapt from a moving train. He hurtled through the windshield of a rolling car. Got pummeled by drug dealers. Overdosed. Swallowed rat poison. Tried to hang himself. In his tumultuous 21 years, Danny Watt danced with death in the most amazing, horrible ways. In the end, two college students spotted him facedown in the cold, murky water of the C&O Canal one afternoon in April 2008. The medical examiner said Danny had drowned. It was an end that Danny's parents, Bobby and Mary Watt of Reston, had struggled to stave off for many years. But after refinancing their house three times to put their son in every substance abuse and mental health program imaginable, after going to countless meetings and hearings and hospitals and jails, after badgering every possible person in Fairfax County who might help them, they could not save Danny. "We just went through so much for so long," said Mary Watt, breaking into tears. "We tried and tried for so many years, fighting, only to lose." Danny Watt was a walking symbol of a phenomenon called co-occurring disorders, or dual diagnosis, which is estimated to affect 7 million adults in the United States. These people are both seriously mentally ill and abusing drugs or alcohol. About half of all adults who are seriously mentally ill are also thought to be addicted. The mental health community calls this "self-medication." The federal government estimates that 90 percent of people with co-occurring disorders do not get the treatment they need. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13105 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lynne Peeples in 60-Second Science Blog Give a dog a treat, and she just might learn that new trick. Could the same concept also help a human recover from a brain injury, or become a violin virtuoso? Rewards, especially in combination with drugs that enhance the neurotransmitter dopamine, may boost both cognitive and tactile learning, according to research published today in the journal PLoS Biology. “We have known a lot about reward mechanisms,” says Burkhard Pleger of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and lead author on the study, “but it was not well known how rewards influence sensory processing.” Researchers designed a game to elucidate this process. Prior to each set of four consecutive trials, Pleger and his colleagues showed participants how much reward could potentially be earned (incentives ranged from zero to 80 pennies). Subjects then attempted to distinguish which of two electric currents applied to their index fingers carried a higher frequency. If they were correct, the visual monetary reward was displayed. The higher the reward, Pleger and his colleagues found, the more correct decisions were made on subsequent trials. Subjects appeared to be learning. “They always had the carrot in front of their eyes,” says Pleger. A feedback between the sensory and reward centers, he explains, “optimized brain functions to get the highest possible reward.”

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13104 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rachel Ehrenberg A blue dye found in Gatorade and Rocket Pops could play a protective role in the cellular mayhem that follows spinal cord injury. In rats, the dye — known as FD&C Blue No.1 — appears to block a molecule that floods the injury site and kills nerve cells, a team reports in the July 28 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Rats dosed with the dye after injury showed greater improvement in motor skills than rats not receiving the dye. And the food colorant’s low toxicity suggests a new approach for treating spinal cord trauma in humans, injuries for which there are few therapies. “It’s not a cure,” says neuroscientist Maiken Nedergaard of the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., who led the new study. “I don’t think that anything can cure this, but for the patient it could be a big improvement.” The results are impressive and realistic, comments Lynne Weaver, a neuroscientist at the Robarts Research Institute in London, Canada. Weaver notes that the side effects of any new potential therapy must be considered, but “the principle is interesting.” ATP, for adenosine triphosphate, is known as the energy currency of cells, and the molecule is used like a battery whenever cells need to get stuff done. But a few years ago Nedergaard and her colleagues reported that ATP has a darker side. It wreaks havoc when the central nervous system is injured, flooding the injury site and hitting a receptor that sits on some immune system cells. ATP binds to this receptor, called P2X7, resulting in a cascade of events that leads to cell death. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Regeneration; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 13103 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DANA WALTERS In high school, I was a skeleton of who I am now. With pangs of hunger and a jutting rib cage, I was waiting for confidence and determination to flesh me out, fill me and protect me. The story of eating disorders, of young girls starving themselves for the sake of perfection, is a common one, written on the bathroom walls amid the graffiti of rumors and insults. Despite its ubiquity in high school, I believed my hunger was mine alone. Only later did I discover just how truly commonplace my story was. My eating disorder did not make me special. Only curing myself would. I grew up in Swarthmore, Pa., a town not unlike Middlebury, Vt., where I now attend school, but I still thought the substitution of the Green Mountains for the Philadelphia skyline would be just enough to drastically shift my unbalanced psyche. But the deeply instilled sense of overwork and suicidal efficiency still flourished. In Swarthmore, it dotted the driveways of professors, lawyers and doctors, gave nourishment to the soil along the streets named after the most competitive universities in the nation, and resonated in the enthusiasm with which parents flipped through the college announcement edition of the town paper. My new environment, it turned out, was much the same. When I arrived at Middlebury, the beautiful New England buildings screamed of the same hunger for achievement. The competition for perfection was not over. Students glowed with the masochism that drove us to fast ourselves into oblivion. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 13102 - Posted: 07.27.2009

PORTLAND, Maine - She was sociable and happy in high school. But in college that changed abruptly: Depressed and withdrawn, some days she couldn't get out of bed. And that wasn't all. "I had really odd thoughts," recalled the woman, now 21, who asked that her name not be used. While walking across campus at the University of Southern Maine, "sometimes I'd feel like people were just right behind me (who might) jump me or something." Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here She knew it wasn't true, but she couldn't shake the feeling. Sometimes, while driving, she saw imaginary, shadowy people on the sidewalk. And now and then, out of nowhere, there would be a woman's voice in her ear during class, or random soft noises like knocking or the fizzy hiss of a newly opened soda can. When she visited the university health service and talked about feeling depressed, a nurse practitioner saw another problem: a possible case of schizophrenia in the making. This schizophrenia "prodrome" — the early signs — involves a troubled mental state usually found in teens and young adults. It can lead to psychosis, the loss of touch with reality that marks not only schizophrenia, but also some forms of depression or manic-depression. The prodrome can linger for weeks, or years, before it gives way to psychosis — or mysteriously disappears without a trace. © 2009 The Associated Press.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 13101 - Posted: 06.24.2010

From The Economist print edition LABELS matter. Indeed, they can be the difference between life and death. Someone lying in a hospital bed labelled “minimally conscious state” will be kept on life support indefinitely. If the label says “vegetative state”, however, that life support could be turned off any time. A layman might not be able to tell the difference. But a doctor can. Or can he? A worrying study just published in BioMed Central Neurology by Caroline Schnakers, Steven Laureys and their colleagues at the University of Liège’s coma science group suggests that perhaps he cannot—or, perhaps worse, that he prefers to use his intuition rather than the latest diagnostic techniques to tell the difference. As a result, many people may be at risk of early termination even when they show flickering signs that their consciousness has not departed entirely. Vegetative patients are those who show no signs of awareness whatsoever, and in many countries courts can consider petitions to withdraw their food and water, allowing them to die (as happened in a blaze of publicity in the case of Terri Schiavo, in Florida, a few years ago) and for their organs to be removed for transplantation. Patients who do show signs of awareness—those who are able to obey a command to blink or track a moving object with their eyes, for example—are by definition not vegetative and are spared this fate. There is some evidence that, unlike those in a vegetative state, these patients feel pain. Efforts are made to ease their suffering and to rehabilitate them. © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 13100 - Posted: 06.24.2010