By ALAN SCHWARZ No direct impact caused Paul McQuigg’s brain injury in Iraq three years ago. And no wound from the incident visibly explains why Mr. McQuigg, now an office manager at a California Marine base, can get lost in his own neighborhood or arrive at the grocery store having forgotten why he left home. But his blast injury — concussive brain trauma caused by an explosion’s invisible force waves — is no less real to him than a missing limb is to other veterans. Just how real could become clearer after he dies, when doctors slice up his brain to examine any damage. Mr. McQuigg, 32, is one of 20 active and retired members of the military who recently agreed to donate their brain tissue upon death so that the effects of blast injuries — which, unlike most concussions, do not involve any direct contact with the head — can be better understood and treated. The research will be conducted by the Sports Legacy Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Waltham, Mass., and by the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, whose recent examination of the brains of deceased football players has found damage linked to cognitive decline and depression. Whether single, non-impact blasts in battle can cause the same damage as the years of repetitive head bashing seen in football is of particular interest to researchers. The damage, primarily toxic protein deposits and tangled brain fibers, cannot be detected through noninvasive procedures like M.R.I.’s and CT scans. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 12973 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Linda Geddes When you brush your teeth, the toothbrush may actually become part of your arm – at least as far as your brain is concerned. That's the conclusion of a study showing perceptions of arm length change after people handle a mechanical tool. The brain maintains a physical map of the body, with different areas in charge of different body parts. Researchers have suggested that when we use tools, our brains incorporate them into this map. To test the idea, Alessandro Farné of the University of Claude Bernard in Lyon, France, and colleagues attached a mechanical grabber to the arms of 14 volunteers. The modified subjects then used the grabber to pick up out-of-reach objects. Shortly afterwards, the volunteers perceived touches on their elbow and fingertip as further apart than they really were, and took longer to point to or grasp objects with their hand than prior to using the tool. The explanation, say the team, is that their brains had adjusted the brain areas that normally control the arm to account for the tool and not yet adjusted back to normal. "This is the first evidence that tool use alters the body [map]," says Farné. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Robotics
Link ID: 12972 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The controversial withdrawal of a common painkiller has dramatically cut suicides, say researchers. A gradual phase-out of co-proxamol led to 350 fewer suicides and accidental deaths in England and Wales, a study in the British Medical Journal reports. Regulators removed the drug's licence in 2007 after fears about the risk of overdose but the move proved unpopular with some patients and doctors. Arthritis Care says some patients now struggle to control their pain. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency announced the withdrawal in 2005. GPs were encouraged to move patients to other painkillers before the drug's licence was revoked in 2007. After that time doctors could prescribe the drug on a "named patient basis" for those who could not manage their pain with alternatives but as it is unlicensed they did so at their own risk. Study leader Professor Keith Hawton, director of the Centre for Suicide Research at Oxford University, said before the restrictions co-proxamol was responsible for a fifth of all drug-related suicides. By the 2007 deadline, prescribing of the drug had fallen by 59%, his analysis showed. Over the two-year period, deaths from co-proxamol fell by 62%. Specifically there were 295 fewer suicides and 349 fewer deaths from the drug including accidental overdoses. The research also showed that had been no increase in deaths from other painkillers, despite large increases in their use. Professor Hawton said authorities in the US were now considering withdrawing co-proxamol, which is a mixture of paracetamol and an opioid drug. "This marked reduction in suicides and accidental poisonings involving co-proxamol during this period, with no evidence of an increase in deaths involving other analgesics, suggests the initiative has been effective," he added. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 12971 - Posted: 06.22.2009

By Carolyn Y. Johnson With tactics that range from subterfuge to ultrasound beams, scientists are searching for a solution to one of medicine’s most intractable problems: how to get drugs into the brain. Standing in the way is the blood-brain barrier, a formidable defense system that keeps out pathogens and toxins but also bars many potential therapies from reaching the seat of maladies such as brain cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. “The system is supposed to protect us from substances that could be noxious to the brain. Unfortunately, it is also quite efficient in removing various drugs that can actually help in curing certain diseases,’’ said Adam Chodobski, a professor of emergency medicine at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University, who studies the blood-brain barrier. A wall of tightly packed cells, which line the tiny blood vessels that permeate the brain, is the first line of defense. Between those cells is a kind of mortar called a “tight junction,’’ which prevents molecules in the blood from slipping through. Protein pumps act as sentinels, expelling substances that don’t belong, and other brain cells also play a role in the barrier. The barrier is not a solid wall - it lets in oxygen and nutrients, for example, which brain cells can’t live without. And some harmful microbes and cancer cells can get across, as well as a small fraction of medications. Many drugs can’t pass through, however, meaning that doctors who need to deliver a specific drug to the brain may need to drill a hole in the brain. Several technologies exist, including injections and implantable wafers that secrete chemotherapy, but the invasiveness of the procedures limits the number of applications. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12970 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer LaRue Huget Imagine feeling hungry -- starving, even -- all the time, no matter how much you eat. So hungry that you would shoplift, sneak, steal or secretly order takeout food to sate your appetite, without regard for consequences. Kate Kane doesn't have to imagine; she knows. Washington Post readers met Kane in November 2004 when Ranit Mishori, a physician who frequently writes for the paper, reported on Kane's struggle with hyperphagia, or excessive eating. As Mishori noted, Kane's ravenous desire for food is a key symptom of Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), a genetic disorder that affects not only appetite but also muscle tone, metabolism, stature and cognitive ability. About 4,500 Americans are known to have the syndrome, but experts believe it may be undiagnosed in as many as 25,000 others. Kane's father, Jim Kane of Towson, this month helped organize a conference for researchers who work with genetic disorders that are characterized by hyperphagia. The event's prime goal was to have participants join forces to learn what causes hyperphagia, in hope of eventually devising a treatment or cure. Those who gathered in Baltimore for the conference, including researchers from the National Institutes of Health, have another aim, though, one with far broader implications. If they can tease out the physiological, genetic and chemical causes of hyperphagia among people with disorders, that knowledge may prove a potent tool in combating obesity in the general population. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 12969 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Michael Reilly, Discovery News -- Shrews use a primitive form of sonar to navigate their cluttered habitats of underbrush, according to a new study. Though scientists have known for decades that shrews emit audible twittering calls, they have been puzzled as to whether they are used for communication, or for contending with the dense hay and grass, or dark tunnels that fill their environment. Bjorn Siemers of the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology in Germany and a team of researchers captured seven common shrews (Sorex araneus) and nine greater white-toothed shews (Crocidura russula). They tested the animals' behavior in hay layers of varying thickness, and used scent indicators to see whether the shrews changed their calls when they detected the presence of another animal. The shrews didn't respond to scents placed in their cages, and their calls became more rapid as the amount of hay in their environment increased, both of which point to the calls functioning as a navigational aid. Bats and dolphins also use sound to echolocate, but they are more refined in their abilities “ they emit fast, ultrasonic clicks that help them hone in on prey. Shrews' utterances are much slower by comparison and are confined to the audible range, at frequencies of 5-8 kHz. Previous studies also show that shrews can distinguish closed tunnels from open ones in utter darkness. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 12968 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Nora Schultz, Berlin SLEEPING on a complex decision may not help you make the best choice after all. So say two studies that question the evidence for unconscious decision-making. The "unconscious thought" theory for making complex decisions was proposed in a 2006 study by Ap Dijksterhuis at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and colleagues. The team showed volunteers a series of cars and their attributes on a screen, before asking half of them to think carefully about choosing the best car, and the other half to solve anagrams - a distraction technique to allow unconscious processing. Those in the anagram group were more likely to choose the cars with the best attributes, leading the researchers to conclude that it is best to leave tough choices to the unconscious (Science, vol 311, p 1005). Now two teams have questioned this conclusion. Instead, they suggest that the volunteers made their decisions when they first viewed the data, based on an immediate gut instinct. Those in the anagram group simply recalled this original decision when asked to choose. Those in the "thinking" group, however, reconsidered their first impressions while the details of the cars faded from their memory, which led to poorer choices. "What Dijksterhuis ignored is that people might already decide when they first hear about the cars, and not after thinking about it or solving anagrams," says psychologist Daniel Lassiter of Ohio University in Athens. To test this hypothesis, Lassiter and his colleagues repeated Dijksterhuis's experiment with a twist: they told the volunteers to memorise the cars' attributes while viewing them, thus distracting their attention from making an immediate decision. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12967 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Susan Milius MOSCOW, Idaho — Sometimes it’s good to be not so hot. Capsaicinoid compounds, which give chilies their culinary kick, have the happy effect of discouraging a seed-rotting fungus that grows on plants. But new work has found that protecting seeds has a downside, says David C. Haak of the University of Washington in Seattle. In wild chilies, tests linked pungency with vulnerability to drought and to attacks by ants that devour the seeds, he reported June 14 at the Evolution 09 meeting. Chili heat may turn out to be an example of populations adapting to particular local circumstances, an important concept in evolutionary theory, Haak says. And the link between capsaicinoid levels and vulnerability could explain why, even within the same species, not all chilies are hot. Haak says the seed-attacker Fusarium fungus lurks throughout the chilies’ wild range. It’s nasty stuff that ruins about a third of seeds, even in the driest places. Yet he and his colleagues have found plants in dry spots skimp on the protective capsaicinoids. In a dry-zone population, plants yielding mouth-scorching chilies were more rare than in a population in a somewhat wetter place. And the hottest of the dry-zone plants didn’t reach the flamer extremes of the exceptional chilies in more moist zones. Those hot and not chilies illustrate how “adaptations that are beneficial in one environment may be costly in another — for example, pungency in a dry climate,” says Emily Jacobs-Palmer of Harvard University. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Evolution
Link ID: 12966 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Mosquito fish don’t just count on each other for protection from predators — they literally count each other for such protection. These guppylike fish can use numerical information to identify the larger of two nearby groups of fellow fish, report psychologist Marco Dadda of the University of Padova in Italy and his colleagues in an upcoming Cognition. That’s a useful skill to have, the researchers say. Larger groups, or shoals, offer a more effective shield against bigger fish with empty bellies. The researchers allowed individual mosquitofish in a tank to see groups of other fish, but barricades prevented them from seeing an entire group at once. When viewing fish one at a time in each of two groups, mosquito fish spent much more time near larger groups, Dadda and his colleagues report. The fish preferred groups of three over two fish and groups with eight fish over four fish. “We have provided the first evidence that fish are capable of selecting the larger group of social companions by relying exclusively on numerical information,” Dadda says. In two earlier studies, Dadda’s group demonstrated that mosquito fish can distinguish between large quantities, such as 16 versus 8, provided that the numerical ratio is at least 2:1. Such distinctions draw on an ability to estimate large amounts without counting, such as noting the greater area or density of the larger of two shoals, the researchers say. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 12965 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jeremy Laurance Scientists are debating whether stimulants are an acceptable means for people to boost their brain's performance In the middle of the exam season, the offer of a drug that could improve results might excite students but would be likely to terrify their parents. Now, a distinguished professor of bioethics says it is time to embrace the possibilities of "brain boosters" – chemical cognitive enhancement. The provocative suggestion comes from John Harris, director of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics. Ritalin is a stimulant drug, best known as a treatment for hyperactive children. But it has also found a ready black market among students, especially in the US, who are desperate to succeed and are turning to it in preference to the traditional stimulants of coffee and cigarettes. Users say it helps them to focus and concentrate, and this has been confirmed in research studies on adults. David Green, a student at the University of Harvard, told The Washington Post: "In all honesty, I haven't written a paper without Ritalin since my junior year in high school." Matt, a business finance student at the University of Florida, claimed a similar drug, Adderall, had helped him improve his grades. "It's a miracle drug," he told The Boston Globe. "It is unbelievable how my concentration boosts when I use it." ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12964 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katherine Harmon Homosexual behavior seems pointedly un-Darwinian. An animal that doesn't pass along genes by mating with the opposite sex at every, well, conceivable opportunity, seems to be at an evolutionary disadvantage. So what’s in it for the 450-plus species that go for same-sex sex? Two evolutionary biologists from University of California, Riverside, set out to answer that question in a paper published today in Trends in Ecology and Evolution. "It's been observed a lot," says Nathan Bailey, a post-doctoral researcher at U.C. Riverside and lead study author, of same-sex sexual behavior in animals. "But it took people a long time to put it in an evolutionary context." After studying dozens of published articles on the topic, Bailey and his colleague Marlene Zuk concluded that, in addition to being an adaptational strategy, "these behaviors can be a force," Bailey said. "They create a context in which selection can occur [differently] within a population." In the Laysan albatross, for example, previous research has shown that a third of all bonded pairs in a Hawaii colony are two females. This behavior helps the birds, whose colony has far more females than males, by allowing them to share parenting responsibilities. It also gives more stability to the offspring of males, already bonded to a female, who mate opportunistically with females in a same-sex couple. Such a dynamic, then may force gradual changes in behavior and even physical appearance of the birds, the authors note. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 12963 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Arran Frood IN THE early 1960s, a young Russian neurophysiologist called Yuri Moskalenko travelled from the Soviet Union to the UK on a Royal Society exchange programme. During his stay, he co-authored a paper published in Nature. "Variation in blood volume and oxygen availability in the human brain" may not sound subversive, but it was the start of a radical idea. Decades later, having worked in Soviet Russia and become president of the Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, Moskalenko is back in the UK. Now collaborating with researchers at the Beckley Foundation in Oxford, his work is bearing fruit. And strange fruit it is. With funding from the foundation, he is exploring the idea that people with Alzheimer's disease could be treated by drilling a hole in their skull. In fact, he is so convinced of the benefits of trepanation that he claims it may help anyone from their mid-40s onwards to slow or even reverse the process of age-related cognitive decline. Can he be serious? For thousands of years, trepanation has been performed for quasi-medical reasons such as releasing evil spirits that were believed to cause schizophrenia or migraine. Today it is used to prevent brain injury by relieving intracranial pressure, particularly after accidents involving head trauma. In the popular imagination, though, it is considered crude, if not downright barbaric. Yet such is the desperation for effective treatments for dementia that drilling a hole in the skull is not even the strangest game in town (see "Desperate measures to treat dementia"). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 12962 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Catherine Brahic Monkeys may see, hear and speak no evil, but they sure can be naughty, according to the first study to compare the ability of monkeys to deceive others in order to get food. Intentional deceit is not restricted to humans, say Federica Amici and colleagues of Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. Some monkeys use simple forms of deceit, and the ability depends not on how closely related they are to humans, but on their social structure. Amici's team put up to 10 monkeys from three different primate species through the same experiment designed to test their ability to deceive dominant monkeys. Spider monkeys, brown capuchins and long-tailed macaques were shown how to access food that was hidden or just out of reach. They were then put in cages with a socially higher-ranking monkey from the same species. Dominant monkeys in all three species would normally have priority over food, but in this case they did not know how to get to it. Subordinate monkeys of all three species went straight for the food when their dominant partner was not around. But as soon as the dominant monkey was introduced, they held back. This suggests they were intentionally withholding information in order to get the food for themselves. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Animal Communication; Intelligence
Link ID: 12961 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Laurie Martin Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) produced improvements in key areas of cognition and in short-term verbal memory in patients with major depressive disorder, and no adverse cognitive effects were shown.1 The results of this research were presented by Mark Demitrack, MD, vice president and chief medical officer of Neuronetics, Inc, and colleagues at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in May. In this study, cognitive function was examined in patients with pharmacoresistant major depressive disorder. Of these patients, 155 received TMS therapy and 146 received sham TMS. Results of the Mini Mental Status Examination, Buschke Selective Reminding Test, and Autobiographical Memory Interview-Short Form were obtained before the first treatment and at 4 and 6 weeks during an acute treatment course of daily TMS. No significant difference was found between the active TMS group and the placebo TMS group in any of these measures of cognitive function. At the end of the 6 weeks, each group was stratified by clinical outcome. Within the TMS responders group, there was significant improvement in scores on the Buschke Selective Reminding Test for short-term recall and delayed recall. This improvement in cognitive function was not seen in placebo-treated patients. © 1996 - 2009 CMPMedica LLC,

Keyword: Depression; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12960 - Posted: 06.24.2010

MEN are doomed to uncertainty. Women know who their children are, but the ubiquity of sexual cheating makes it difficult for males of many species, humans included, to be sure which youngsters actually belong to them. If a male’s reproductive strategy amounts to little more than “Wham, bam, thank-you ma’am”, this may not matter to him much. But if, as in the human case, he takes an interest in his offspring, it matters a lot. There are few more foolish actions, from an evolutionary point of view, than raising another male’s progeny. This line of reasoning led Alexandra Alvergne and her colleagues at the University of Montpellier, in France, to wonder if human fathers recognise features of children that might give away whose offspring they really are, and use those to guide the amount of attention doled out to each putative son and daughter. To find out, they established an experiment among villagers in the Sine Saloum region of Senegal, where polygynous marriages (ie, men with multiple wives) are common. In such societies the incentives for unmarried men and the opportunities for neglected women to engage in what zoologists who study other harem-forming species refer to as “sneaking” are particularly high. It gives the men a chance to reproduce and the women a chance to spread their bets. Thirty families with at least two children aged between two and seven agreed to participate in a two-part study, in return for gifts of farming equipment and school supplies that were given to the head of their village for appropriate distribution. In the first part, photographs were taken of children and their “fathers”. Over 100 judges, selected from distant villages, were then given images of individual children along with images of three adult men. These judges were asked to decide which man was each child’s father. © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 12959 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Patricia Moreau Imagine a quiet night like any other. Suddenly, your infant’s cries break the silence. Fully loaded with emotion, the sound triggers an urge to stand up and run to your infant’s room. But, considering that your spouse is a musician and you are not, who will be the first to reach the crib? According to Dana L. Strait and a team of researchers at the University of Northwestern in Chicago, the musician should win the race. Their latest study showed that years of musical training leave the brains of musicians better attuned to the emotional content, like anger, of vocal sounds. Ten years of cello, say, can make a person more emotionally intelligent, in some sense. So the alarm carried in a baby’s cry make a deeper impression; your spouse wins the race. The new work is part of an emerging portrait of the broader connections between music, emotion and speech. These studies are finding that musicians are more accurate in detecting emotion -- such as joy, sadness and anger -- in speech samples. The effect has been found even in children as young as 7 years old, with as little as one year of music training. It is a fascinating example of how experience in one domain (music) benefits another (emotion perception). However, it is not until very recently, with the publication of the new study by Strait and her colleagues, that the biological foundation of the effect has been demonstrated. Strait’s team decided to study the brain’s very first responses to sound, in the brain stem. The brain stem is the most ancient part of the brain, andis the main entry door for all sensory stimuli. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Hearing; Emotions
Link ID: 12958 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway Human intelligence may not be so human after all. New research on monkeys finds that individual animals perform consistently on numerous different tests of intelligence – a hallmark of human IQ and, perhaps, an indication that human intellect has a very ancient history. No doubt, the human brain has bulged in the six million or so years since our species last shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees, offering more cognitive prowess compared to our closest relatives. But traces of human intelligence, such as a sense of numbers, or the ability to use tools, lurk in a wide range of animals, particularly in other primates. Less clear, though, is whether animals possess the same kind of general intelligence as humans: where performance on one facet, say verbal, strongly predicts performance on other tests of intelligence like working memory. "We were essentially looking for evidence of a general intelligence factor – something that would be an evolutionary homologue of what we see in humans," says Konika Banerjee, a psychologist at Harvard University who led the new study along with colleague Marc Hauser. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 12957 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ABBY ELLIN LIKE almost every dieter in America, Wendy Bassett has used all sorts of weight-loss products. Nothing worked, she said, until she tried Sensa: granules she scatters on almost everything she eats, and which are supposed to make dieters less hungry by enhancing the smell and taste of food. “Every time I touch a piece of food, I pour it on,” said Ms. Bassett, 34, an accountant in Tyler, Tex. She has been using Sensa since February. So far, she said, she has lost 30 pounds. The maker of Sensa claims that its effectiveness is largely related to smell: the heightened scent and flavor of food that has been sprinkled with Sensa stimulate the olfactory bulb — the organ that transmits smell from the nose to the brain — to signal the “satiety center” of the hypothalamus. Hormones that suppress appetite are then released. But can the manipulation of smell really lead to weight loss? A handful of niche products would have you believe just that. In addition to Sensa, which has been available since last summer, there is SlimScents, aromatherapy diet pens filled with fruity or minty odors; a peppermint spray called Happy Scent; and the vanilla-doused Aroma Patch, which you wear on your hand, wrist or chest. Last month, Compellis Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, Mass., began human trials on a nasal spray designed to do the opposite of what Sensa does: to curb the appetite by blocking rather than enhancing smell. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 12956 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower The last thing depression investigators need is another dead-end research downer. Efforts to find genes that directly contribute to depression have come up empty. And a research team now concludes, after a closer inspection of accumulated research, that a gene variant initially tagged as a depression promoter when accompanied by stressful experiences actually has no such effect. By showing that follow-up studies collectively don’t support the study that launched this line of research, two new analyses debunk the proposed pathway to depression. The chances of becoming depressed rise as stressful events mount, regardless of genetic makeup, report statistical geneticist Neil Risch of the University of California, San Francisco, and his colleagues. The new studies, published together in the June 17 Journal of the American Medical Association, also demonstrate the difficulty of replicating reports of any gene variants that appear to work with environmental triggers to foster psychiatric disorders. Individual studies typically lack the statistical power to detect gene-by-environment interactions correctly because most candidate genes and stressful events exert modest effects on mental ailments at best, the scientists say. “I’m supportive of looking for gene-by-environment risk factors, but we’ll need much larger samples to find interactions that can be independently replicated,” Risch says. In his view, statistically rigorous studies will need tens of thousands of participants. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Depression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12955 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Heidi Ledford A compound that stimulates the production of certain steroids in the brain may one day soothe the troubled nerves of people with anxiety disorders, according to results from a small clinical trial. The compound boosts the activity of a 'translocator' protein inside cells that helps transport cholesterol molecules and allows some to be turned into steroids that act in the brain. These 'neurosteroids' regulate the effect of a relaxation-promoting molecule called GABA, and are associated with reduced anxiety. Levels of the neurosteroids plummet during panic attacks. The compound has so far been tested only in a small clinical trial, but if it survives further testing, it could fill a need for better anxiety treatments. Patients with anxiety disorders have a range of symptoms, from recurrent and debilitating panic attacks to a more general sense of social anxiety. And some people use medication to quell acute phobias, such as a fear of flying or of public speaking. "It's not that we don't have treatments, but the available treatments suffer from undesirable adverse effects," says Jerrold Rosenbaum, chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. One class of drugs, called benzodiazepines, act quickly and are highly effective, but can cause drowsiness. Some users also develop a tolerance to them, and the withdrawal symptoms can be worse than the disorder itself, explains Rosenbaum. "A drug that worked nearly as well as the benzodiazepines without their unwanted side effects would be quite a big winner." © 2009 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Emotions; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12954 - Posted: 06.24.2010