-- Monkeys are able to learn from their mistakes and will take risks to potentially win better rewards when playing games, according to a new study. "This is the first evidence that monkeys, like people, have 'would-have, could-have, should-have' thoughts," said Ben Hayden, a researcher at the Duke University Medical Center and lead author of the study published in the journal Science. Hayden and his team trained the monkeys to associate a green square on a computer screen with a "high value" reward and other colors with "low value" treats. The monkeys then played a game similar to the game show "Lets Make a Deal" where they had to choose between eight identical white squares. And to test if they were capable of the abstract thought process that allows humans to consider consequences and potential outcomes, they were shown what prizes they missed after receiving the juice. The researchers monitored the neurons in an area of the monkey's brains called the anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC, which plays an important role in decision-making. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12856 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Too much fast food could put people on a fast track to diabetes, a new study suggests. Just one month on a fast food diet was enough to alter the ability of fat cells to respond to insulin, researchers from Linköping University in Sweden reported online April 30 in Molecular Medicine. The inability to respond properly to insulin, called insulin resistance, is a hallmark of type 2 diabetes. Cell biologist Peter Strålfors of Linköping University got the idea to put people on a fast food diet from the 2004 documentary Super Size Me, in which a man eats a steady diet of McDonald’s food and grows heavier and increasingly ill. Strålfors recruited 18 lean young people to go on a fast food binge. At the beginning of the experiment, the volunteers averaged a trim body mass index of 22.4. Body mass index, or BMI, is calculated from a person’s weight and height and indicates the degree of body fat, in most cases. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered normal. To follow a high-calorie diet, volunteers ate two fast food meals a day for a month. They also restricted physical activity to 5,000 steps a day — half the recommend amount of daily exercise. Before the experiment began, the researchers extracted fat from under the skin of the volunteers’ bellies. Or tried to — the volunteers were so lean that researchers were able to get enough fat for analysis from only six people. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 12855 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(UPI) -- Older adults with the most difficulty understanding spoken words had less brain tissue in a region important for speech recognition, U.S. researchers found. The findings, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, may help explain why hearing aids do not benefit all people with age-related hearing difficulties. Study leader Kelly Harris of the Medical University of South Carolina said that some hearing loss can be a normal part of aging, but many older adults complain about difficulty understanding speech, especially in challenging listening conditions like crowded restaurants. The researchers scanned the brains of 18 younger adults -- 19-39 years old -- and 18 older adults -- 61-79 years old -- as they tried to identify words in listening conditions that varied in difficulty. During a challenging listening condition, the older adults repeated fewer words correctly than did the younger adults, consistent with previous studies. The older adults who had the most difficulty recognizing words also had the least brain volume in a region of auditory cortex called Herschel's gyrus/superior temporal gyrus, Harris said. © 2009 United Press International, Inc.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 12854 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Is that your work ... or a pill's? By the Monitor's Editorial Board Legal drugs that are designed to treat the mentally ill are now being used widely by people seeking a "brain boost" to enhance their work or studies. In many cases, the pills for this Brave New World are being sold over the Internet. Forget for a second that these neuro-enhancing drugs can be highly addictive or that experts say they may have long-term, adverse side effects. Or that the nonprescribed use of such medicine is illegal and the Food and Drug Administration isn't doing enough to stop it. The bigger danger in this new "mind hacking" is that it furthers the idea that people are material machines that can be altered like robots to perform ever-greater mental feats. The notion of life being more than molecules fades like a beautiful sunset behind a storm cloud. And then there is the unfairness of a student or worker who is "high" on psychostimulants being able to perform better on a test or task than someone who chooses to compete without chemical augmentation. A society that still runs on merit and the integrity and uniqueness of each individual must not be forced to screen people before every exam, job interview, or work presentation to see if they have used memory-boosters, productivity-enhancers, or other such "cosmetic neurology." Just look at how Major League Baseball and many other sports must now screen for steroids as body enhancers. These sports are no longer seen as level playing fields for athletes whose records are often suspect. © 2009 The Christian Science Monitor

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12853 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Got a tough problem to solve? Try daydreaming. Contrary to the notion that daydreaming is a sign of laziness, letting the mind wander can actually let the parts of the brain associated with problem-solving become active, a new study finds. Kalina Christoff of the University of British Columbia in Canada and her colleagues placed study participants inside an fMRI scanner, where they performed the simple routine task of pushing a button when numbers appear on a screen. The researchers tracked subjects' attentiveness moment-to-moment through brain scans, subjective reports from subjects and by tracking their performance on the task. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here Until now, scientists had thought that the brain's "default network," which is linked to easy, routine mental activity, was the only part of the brain that remains active when the mind wanders. But in the study subjects, the brain's "executive network" — associated with high-level, complex problem-solving — also lit up. The less subjects were aware that their mind was wandering, the more both networks were activated. "This study shows our brains are very active when we daydream — much more active than when we focus on routine tasks," Christoff said. The findings, detailed in the May 11 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that daydreaming is an important cognitive state where we may unconsciously turn our attention from immediate tasks to sort through important problems in our lives. © 2009 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 12852 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Amanda Gardner (HealthDay News) -- Any kind of acupuncture, whether it pierced the skin or not, eased chronic lower back pain in a group of adult patients. "All were superior to usual care," said Daniel Cherkin, lead author of a report published in the May 11 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. "Acupuncture is an effective treatment for chronic back pain. People receiving acupuncture are more likely to get better." But the unusual finding that non-penetrating acupuncture did as well as acupuncture that used standard needles will raise questions about how this works, added Cherkin, who is a senior investigator with the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle. Chronic back pain is a chronic health issue in the United States, and is the top reason why patients go to acupuncturists, often when traditional therapies disappoint. Although there have been previous studies on whether acupuncture represents a viable treatment option, "the evidence of the value of acupuncture in general is very murky because the quality of the research is not very good," Cherkin said. This trial, the largest randomized one of its kind, was funded by the National Center for complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. © 2009 ScoutNews, LLC.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 12851 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jesse Bering How does one broach such an indelicate topic as body odor except perhaps to borrow from the immortal words of the Roman playwright, Terence, who famously said that, “nothing human is alien to me.” True, Terence probably wasn’t referring to flatulence, armpit secretions, halitosis, foot odor, and the many and unspeakably loathsome scents associated with various fungal infections in the body’s hinterlands when he wrote this. Still, his axiom covers a lot of territory on the human condition, including our somewhat smelly natures. And as mature science-minded adults, perhaps we shouldn’t be so shy about our stenches, anyway, since it turns out that our social behaviors—particularly human sexual instincts—are driven by our perceptions of each other’s aromas more than we tend to realize. Compared to the brains of other mammals, the primate olfactory cortex (the brain region associated with processing smells) has decreased in size and relative importance over the course of evolution, being outranked in functional priority by the visual system. But we do have noses for a reason. In fact, for many reasons, a sizeable proportion of which involves gathering useful information from the environment in the form of “chemosignals,” more commonly known as pheromones. As recent findings tell us, other people’s apocrine glands—that is to say, their armpits—are routinely piping out a lot of important social information. These armpit odor molecules are sucked up into our sinuses, processed by our brains, and translated into some rather interesting psychological and behavioral reactions. Men’s body odors tend to be more pungent than women’s, and this peculiarly strong punch can communicate a lot of information about the individual’s genetic quality. Women, in turn, have an almost preternatural olfactory sense, one that appears designed for unconsciously sniffing out the mate value of prospective reproductive partners. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12850 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Victoria Gill Earwig mothers sniff out their "best" offspring and lavish them with care, according to new research. The insects pick up odours from their clutch of "nymphs" and adjust their maternal behaviour in response. When they pick up a chemical signal from healthy, well-fed youngsters, they spend more time nursing them, at the expense of their hungrier babies. The study, which is the first to show this behaviour in insects, is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Earwig parenting, it seems, is about favouritism; the standard of care drops dramatically when mums pick up the chemical signals from hungry, unhealthy nymphs. In these cases, the adults invest less time and effort in feeding. The researchers, who expected to see the opposite result, suggest that this could be "because the insects look for signals of quality instead of need. These insects have a clutch of 30-60 offspring, and there is lots of mortality," explained lead researcher Flore Mas from the Zoological Institute at the University of Basel, Switzerland. "So there is no point investing (resources) in offspring that are already in bad shape." While communication via chemicals is common in social insects, this study is the first to show exactly how they have evolved to employ it in parenting. The team that carried out the study explained "begging signals" were well recognised in the avian world - hungry chicks opened their mouths widely and made specific sounds that were recognised by their parents to mean "feed me". (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12849 - Posted: 05.14.2009

Graduating from a topnotch institution makes the chances good that seniors like future doctor Chelsea McGuire, future educator Ashley Anderson, and soon-to-be healthcare industry analyst Asher Persigian will be able to attain whatever life goals they set. And all of these graduating University of Rochester students agree that success is not defined by fame or fortune. Fulbright scholar McGuire will spend a year in the Dominican Republic helping to fight the HIV epidemic before attending medical school. She wants to make healthcare, which she views as “the basic prerequisite to anything,” more efficient and accessible. “That’s not necessarily a very glamorous job, or particularly high on the fame and fortune context, but that I think would make me happier than anything else,” she says. Anderson, president of the campus Black Students’ Union and an accomplished dancer, hopes to provide educational opportunities to all, regardless of “special needs” or other labels. She thinks by being smart and planning ahead, she can have financial security without being materialistic. “I’m a woman of faith,” she says. “No money amount would be able to give me what God can give me and what I can give to other people.” And even though Perzigian is looking forward to experiencing the fast-paced corporate world and culture, “we can’t keep that up forever,” he says, adding that he had several job offers and took the one that would take him back near his hometown and family. “Without people… to share your life with, I really don’t see the point,” he says. ©2009 ScienCentral

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12848 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have identified a protective gene that increases survival in motor neuron disease. People with the KIFAP3 gene lived 14 months longer on average than other MND patients. Experts hope they will be able to use this knowledge to develop life-extending treatments for patients with this debilitating and fatal disease. So far, one drug, riluzole, has been proven to extend life expectancy, but only by a few months. MND attacks the nerves that control movement and is often rapidly progressive. The vast majority of people with MND die within two to five years. Half of people die within 14 months of diagnosis. The researchers wanted to find out why a small minority appear to be more resistant to the disease. To do this they looked at 300,000 genetic variants in 2,359 people with MND and 2,814 unaffected volunteers from six different countries. They found that people with two beneficial variants of KIFAP3 lived on average four years while those with only one or none lived on average for two years and eight months. This improved the chances of surviving five years from about 10% to more than 30% for those carrying the "good" variants of KIFAP3. Lead researcher Professor Ammar Al-Chalabi, of King's College London, said scientists would now be able to work on designing new treatments based on KIFAP3. Treatments can now be directly designed to exploit the effect of this gene variation." (C)BBC

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12847 - Posted: 05.14.2009

By Judy Foreman The heavenly brew, once deemed harmful to health, is turning out to be, if not quite a health food, at least a low-risk drink, and in many ways a beneficial one. It could protect against diabetes, liver cancer, cirrhosis, and Parkinson's disease. What happened? New research - lots of it - and the recognition that older, negative studies often failed to tease apart the effects of coffee and those of smoking because so many coffee drinkers were also smokers. "Coffee was seen as very unhealthy," said Rob van Dam, a coffee researcher and epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health. "Now we have a more balanced view. We're not telling people to drink it for health. But it is a good beverage choice." As you digest the news on coffee, keep in mind that coffee and caffeine are not the same thing. In fact, "they are vastly different," said coffee researcher Terry Graham, chair of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. One can be good for you; the other, less so. "Coffee is a complex beverage with hundreds, if not thousands, of bioactive ingredients," he said. "A cup of coffee is 2 percent caffeine, 98 percent other stuff." Before we rhapsodize further, a few caveats: Caffeine - whether in coffee, tea, soft drinks, or pills - can make you jittery and anxious and, in some people, can trigger insomnia. Data are mixed on whether pregnant women who consume caffeine are more likely to miscarry. In general, 200 milligrams a day - the amount in one normal-size cup of coffee - is believed safe for pregnant women, said van Dam. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12846 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By RONI CARYN RABIN Few people think twice about taking aspirin or ibuprofen. But for those 75 and older, the high doses needed to treat chronic pain may be so dangerous that patients may be better off taking opioids instead, an expert panel has found. New pain management guidelines issued by the American Geriatrics Society late last month removed those everyday medicines, called Nsaids, for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, from the list of drugs recommended for frail elderly adults with persistent pain. The panel said the painkillers should be used “rarely” in that population, “with extreme caution” and only in “highly selected individuals.” Acetaminophen (like Tylenol) remains the top choice for treating chronic pain, but for those patients unable to get relief, the next step on the ladder is opioids, the guidelines say — as long as patients and their caregivers are screened for previous substance abuse. The recommendation, which is already proving controversial, was made even though Nsaids are known to be fairly effective for chronic inflammatory pain conditions that often plague older adults, and even though opiates can be addictive. “We’ve come out a little strong at this point in time about the risks of Nsaids in older people,” said Dr. Bruce Ferrell, a professor of geriatrics at U.C.L.A. who is chairman of the panel. “We hate to throw the baby out with the bathwater — they do work for some people — but it is fairly high risk when these drugs are given in moderate to high doses, especially when given over time. “It looks like patients would be safer on opioids than on high doses of Nsaids for long periods of time,” he continued, adding that for most older people, the risk of addiction appears to be low. “You don’t see people in this age group stealing a car to get their next dose.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 12845 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Peter Aldhous WHEN the mortar rounds started dropping, David Wells and his US Marine Corps buddies knew what they were supposed to do - get under cover and try to locate the origin of the threat. But when they came under fire in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2005, things didn't go according to the training manual. Wells was a mortuary affairs specialist with the grisly task of ensuring that the marines' creed of "No man left behind" doesn't just apply to the living. His unit had been working for hours around a truck wrecked by a buried explosive device, painstakingly recovering the remains of fallen comrades. Then the first blast went off, and the grim quiet erupted into pandemonium. Far from running for cover, Wells stayed in plain view, dropped to one knee and cocked his rifle. If the mortar attack had been followed by gunshots, he might not have lived to tell the tale. His comrades performed no better. "I remember one guy throwing down his weapon and diving under the truck," Wells recalls. "One guy just started yelling incoherently. Another was sitting there smoking a cigarette and he didn't move at all." Military training aims to instil the appropriate response to such situations as second nature, but the extreme stress of combat can cloud even the best-trained minds, making people act in confused and sometimes dangerous ways. Researchers are now starting to understand the physiological origins of this cognitive "fog of war", finding that the severity of soldiers' symptoms correlates with the levels of various hormones and neurotransmitters. This work has revealed why some soldiers manage to keep their head amid the chaos while others are clouded in confusion, and it has even suggested drugs and supplements which could one day help all troops to think more clearly under fire. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 12844 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Claire Thomas In tribal societies, one might expect that the fiercest warriors get the most women and father the most children. But that's not necessarily the case, says a new study of the brutal Waorani tribe of Ecuador. The most aggressive Wao warriors have about the same number of wives and children as milder-mannered men have, and their children are less likely to survive beyond the age of 15, largely due to an endless cycle of revenge killings. The Waorani are one of the most homicidal tribes ever studied. Located in a region just south of the Napo River, the place where the Andes Mountains meet the Amazon Basin, the tribe is preoccupied with revenge. Young Wao men are encouraged to develop a ferocious reputation early on, and before long they start raiding. The tribespeople constantly recount stories of these raids in gruesome detail, noting who was responsible and who needed to be avenged. Half of all Waos die violently. Studies of a similarly murderous tribe, the Yanomamö of nearby Venezuela, suggested that such homicidal behavior conveyed an evolutionary advantage. In a 1988 paper in Science, anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, now a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that the most aggressive Yanomamö men had higher prestige within the tribe, which led to them having more wives and children, than less-aggressive men. The new study argues that the picture is not so clear-cut. Lead author Stephen Beckerman of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and colleagues interviewed 121 Waorani elders to compile histories of 95 of the tribe's warriors. (The Waorani are much more peaceful today than they were in the past, possibly due to Christian missionaries, who first made contact in 1958.) The team defined highly aggressive men as those who took part in more than four raids over their lifetimes; some of the most violent warriors fought in as many as 16 raids. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Aggression; Evolution
Link ID: 12843 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News -- From tickling to playing catch, animals engage in certain behaviors just for fun, even enjoying sensations that are unknown to humans, concludes an extensive new survey on pleasure in the animal kingdom. The findings, published in the latest Applied Animal Behavior Science, hold moral significance, argues author Jonathan Balcombe. He believes scientists, conservationists and other animal rights activists should not overlook animal joy. View a slide show about animals seeking pleasure here. "The capacity for pleasure means that an animal's life has intrinsic value, that is, value to the individual independent of his or her value to anyone else, including humans," Balcombe, a senior research scientist for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, explained to Discovery News. He determined animals experience happiness for happiness' sake related to play, food, touch and sex. Observations of herring gulls in Virginia, for example, found these birds play "drop-catch," tossing clams and other small, hard objects as though they were baseballs, just for pure enjoyment. In terms of food, green iguanas go to great lengths to find fresh, leafy lettuce, even when supplied with ample amounts of more nutritious reptile chow. Studies on other animals indicate some foods, independent of their nutrition levels, cause animals to release pleasure-producing opioids in their bodies. Language-trained apes and parrots have even told their owners they loved or hated certain edibles. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 12842 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Dr. Richard Cytowic is one of the leading researchers of synesthesia, a condition in which two normally separated sensations - such as sight and sound, or touch and taste - occur at the same time. As a result, a synesthetic person might experience the taste of a dish on her fingertips, or be convinced that the letter X is a vibrant turquoise. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Cytowic about his new book, Wednesday is Indigo Blue, which he co-wrote with David Eagleman. LEHRER: What first got you interested in synesthesia? CYTOWIC: It was an accident. I like etymology and so knew the word, whereas my colleagues back in 1979 had never heard of synesthesia. In fact, they refused to believe it could be real, and warned that looking into such “weird” and “New Age” nonsense would ruin my career. Their denial was the typical reaction of orthodoxy to something it can’t explain. It is said that chance favors the prepared mind, so I guess I was ready when a dinner host apologized that there weren’t “enough points on the chicken.” For Michael Watson, who I later wrote about as “The Man Who Tasted Shapes,” flavor was more than a mouthful. Taste was also a touch sensation felt on his face and in his hands. “With an intense flavor,” he explained, “a feeling sweeps down my arm and I feel weight, shape, texture, and temperature as if I’m actually grasping something.” Fortunately, I could use university resources to quietly study Michael in depth and write papers. What interested me most was pondering an experience that “wasn’t supposed to be.” © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12841 - Posted: 06.24.2010

US scientists say they have successfully reversed the effects of Alzheimer's with experimental drugs. The drugs target and boost the function of a newly pinpointed gene involved in the brain's memory formation. In mice, the treatment helped restore long-term memory and improve learning for new tasks, Nature reports. The same drugs - HDAC inhibitors - are currently being tested to treat Huntington's disease and are on the market to treat some cancers. They reshape the DNA scaffolding that supports and controls the expression of genes in the brain. The Alzheimer's gene the drugs act upon, histone deacetylase 2 (HDAC2), regulates the expression of a plethora of genes implicated in plasticity - the brain's ability to change in response to experience - and memory formation. This findings build on the team's 2007 breakthrough in which mice with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease regained long-term memories and the ability to learn. Lead researcher Professor Li-Huei Tsai explained: "It brings about long-lasting changes in how other genes are expressed, which is probably necessary to increase numbers of synapses and restructure neural circuits, thereby enhancing memory. "To our knowledge, HDAC inhibitors have not been used to treat Alzheimer's disease or dementia. But now that we know that inhibiting HDAC2 has the potential to boost synaptic plasticity, synapse formation and memory formation. In the next step, we will develop new HDAC2-selective inhibitors and test their function for human diseases associated with memory impairment to treat neurodegenerative diseases." (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 12840 - Posted: 05.09.2009

Al Kooper didn’t know what to play. He’d told some half-truths to get into Bob Dylan’s recording session — the musicians were working on some song tentatively titled “Like A Rolling Stone” — and Kooper had been assigned the Hammond organ. There was only one problem: Kooper didn’t play the organ. He was a guitarist. The first takes were predictably terrible — Kooper was just trying not to get kicked out of the studio. But on take four, he suddenly found his chords. Kooper’s playing was pure improv — “I was like a little kid fumbling in the dark for a light switch,” he would later remember — but he ended up inventing one of the most famous organ riffs in modern music. There is something profoundly mysterious about this kind of creativity. Kooper didn’t have time to think — the chorus was about to happen — and so he just started banging on the ivory keys. This same impromptu process defines some of the most famous creations of modern art, from John Coltrane letting loose on “A Love Supreme,” to Jackson Pollock dripping paint haphazardly on a canvas. These are works made entirely in the moment — their beauty is spontaneous. But how does such an act of imagination happen? How does the mind create on command? William James described the creative process as a “seething cauldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity.” In the last year, two separate experiments have attempted to see inside the cauldron, to figure out how a loom of electric cells finds the exact right notes on the upright organ. ©2005-2009 Seed Media Group LLC.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12839 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHICAGO - Leo Lytel was diagnosed with autism as a toddler. But by age 9 he had overcome the disorder. His progress is part of a growing body of research that suggests at least 10 percent of children with autism can “recover” from it — most of them after undergoing years of intensive behavioral therapy. Skeptics question the phenomenon, but University of Connecticut psychology professor Deborah Fein is among those convinced it’s real. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here She presented research this week at an autism conference in Chicago that included 20 children who, according to rigorous analysis, got a correct diagnosis but years later were no longer considered autistic. Among them was Leo, a boy in Washington, D.C., who once made no eye contact, who echoed words said to him and often spun around in circles — all classic autism symptoms. Now he is an articulate, social third-grader. His mother, Jayne Lytel, says his teachers call Leo a leader. The study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, involves children ages 9 to 18. Autism researcher Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer of the advocacy group Autism Speaks, called Fein’s research a breakthrough. Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 12838 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers in Sweden say there might be a link between constant summer sunlight and a high rate of suicide in Greenland, a finding that medical officials in northern Canada are watching. A team led by psychiatrist Karin Sparring Björkstén of the Karolinska Institutet looked at the seasonal variation of suicides throughout Greenland between 1968 and 2002. The team's findings, published in the journal BMC Psychiatry on Friday, found an increase in the number of suicides during the summer months in Greenland, with a peak in June. Björkstén told CBC News she was surprised by the findings, but believes the sunlight could be amplifying underlying mental health issues and other problems. "There are, of course, many reasons that people commit suicide. But in the summer, when you don't sleep for extended periods of time, or you sleep very little, you may lose judgment," she said. "Some people actually become manic or delirious and they really don't know what they are doing. Perhaps they didn't intend to commit suicide." In the north of the Arctic island, Björkstén said 82 per cent of suicides occurred during the long periods of 24-hour summer light. Björkstén's team also suggested that light-generated imbalances could lead to increased impulsiveness. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Depression
Link ID: 12837 - Posted: 06.24.2010