Prions, the mis-folded proteins best known for causing diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cows, scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans, could also help yeast survival, according to a study in the journal Cell1. "We think prions are really important," says co-author Simon Alberti of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "When environmental conditions are harsh, they might allow a species to survive." The work, led by Susan Lindquist of the Whitehead Institute, bolsters the theory that prions might confer an evolutionary advantage, says Alberti. Lindquist first broached that idea nine years ago, after finding that a prion called PSI+ in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae triggered heritable changes that could provide a way of adapting to fluctuating environments2. More recent work also suggests prions might play a role in memory in sea slugs and smell in mice. In the new work, a scan of the S. cerevisiae genome yielded 24 potential prion-forming proteins. Only five prions were known to exist in yeast before this study. The team focused on a protein called Mot3 and found that it can twist into a prion form. When in its normal shape, Mot3 suppresses yeast genes involved in building the cellular wall. But when Mot3 kinks into a prion, it loses this function and the wall-building genes activate. Hence, yeast carrying the Mot3 prions grew thicker, more robust cell walls. © 2009 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 12716 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New research is shining a light on differences in the brains of soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder when compared with soldiers who return from combat without the condition. The work could some day lead to the use of brain scans to help diagnose PTSD, to tailor treatment or even identify people who might be at risk of developing the problem if they're exposed to violence in a war zone, experts say. 'This is consistent with the hypervigilance symptoms that are associated with PTSD that might make these people be very sensitive to detecting anything that could be relevant for survival.'— Dr. Florin Dolcos Dr. Florin Dolcos, an assistant professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of Alberta, travelled to Italy to present the research Friday at the World Psychiatric Association congress in Florence. The experiments were conducted in North Carolina by a team led by Dr. Rajendra Morey of Duke University. Morey is also director of the neuroimaging lab at Durham Veterans Administration Medical Center. Forty-two U.S. soldiers who had returned from Iraq and Afghanistan took part in the study, including 22 soldiers who had developed post-traumatic stress disorder and 20 who had not. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Stress; Brain imaging
Link ID: 12715 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Roberta Friedman Scientists know that small variations in certain genes can predispose people to cancers or heart disease. Now researchers are starting to show a direct, quantifiable effect on learning traceable to these types of genetic influences: single-nucleotide polymorphisms. A difference in just one amino acid in a protein might explain why some people learn new motor skills faster and reach higher levels of performance. The protein, called brain-derived neurotro­phic factor (BDNF), is a key driver of synaptic plasti­city, the ability of the connections between brain cells to change in strength. This plasticity is an important factor in learning, explains neurologist Janine Reis, who led the study at the National Institutes of Health. According to Reis, this finding offers the first evidence that slight variations in BDNF’s structure affect learning ability. Volunteers with one type of BDNF learned faster and performed better at a task in which they had to grip a handle more or less tightly to move a computer cursor through a sequence of targets. Those with a different variant never reached the skill level acquired by the faster learners. (The researchers excluded people who play video games.) Other groups have found that the BDNF version that Reis linked with poorer acquisition of skills is associated with reduced function of the hippocampus, a brain region involved in motor learning. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Trophic Factors; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 12714 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey You snooze, you lose connections between brain cells, two new studies suggest. People have known for some time that getting enough sleep is crucial for proper brain function. “If you don’t get enough sleep your ability to acquire, process and recall information is going to be impaired,” says Paul Shaw, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis and coauthor of one of the new studies. But scientists debate exactly how sleep helps the brain learn and remember. Two studies appearing in the April 3 Science suggest that sleep weakens or severs connections between brain cells to make way for new information. A study by Giorgio Gilestro, Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli of the University of Wisconsin–Madison shows that proteins found in the connections between neurons, called synapses, build up in fruit fly brains while the flies are awake. Depriving flies of sleep leads to ever-greater levels of synaptic proteins, the researchers show. Levels of the proteins decrease as the flies sleep. Scientists usually determine synapse strength by measuring electrical activity of neurons, but fruit fly brains are far too small for electrical measurements, Cirelli says. The proteins, she says, are markers of synaptic strength. If true, the new finding would offer support for the theory of synaptic homeostasis, advanced by Tononi and Cirelli. The theory holds that sleep scales back the strength of connections between neurons, weakening the strongest connections and completely eliminating the weakest synapses. The cutbacks help save resources, the researchers say, and boost the signal of important memories over the noise of unneeded connections (SN: 12/20/08, p. 9). © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12713 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Adults who suffer chronic sleep problems may be more likely to try to commit suicide, US research suggests. Doctors are being warned to be vigilant if a patient reports disturbed sleep - even if they have no history of mental health problems. The more types of sleep disturbances people had, the more likely they were to have thoughts of killing themselves, or actually try to do so. The study will be presented at a World Psychiatric Association meeting. The World Health Organization estimates that about 877,000 people worldwide die by suicide every year. For every death up to 40 suicide attempts are made. Scientists have consistently linked sleep disturbances to an increased risk of suicidal behaviour in people with psychiatric disorders and in adolescents. But it has been unclear whether the association also exists in the general adult population. A University of Michigan team examined the relationship over one year between sleep problems, and suicidal behaviour in 5,692 Americans. During the course of the year 2.6% of the sample had suicidal thoughts, and 0.5% were recorded as making a suicide attempt. They looked at three types of sleep problems - difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep and waking at least two hours earlier than desired. The researchers took account of factors such as substance abuse, depression, anxiety disorder, and physical illness, as well as social factors such as marriage and financial status. People with two or more symptoms of insomnia were 2.6 times more likely to report a suicide attempt than those whose sleep was not disturbed. Early morning waking was the single trait most strongly linked to suicidal behaviour. (C)BBC

Keyword: Sleep; Depression
Link ID: 12712 - Posted: 04.02.2009

Do blind people ever suffer from seasonal affective disorder? If so, can sunshine or tanning beds help? —Kirstin Steele, Charleston, S.C. Circadian and vision neu­ro­scientist Russell G. Foster of the University of Oxford answers: Because blind people retain a newly discovered system of light-detecting cells, they, too, can suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Patients who have SAD struggle with serious mood changes in the fall and winter seasons. Symptoms include excessive sleepiness, low energy, and a tendency to crave sweets and starchy foods. Normally our circadian rhythm is synchronized to the light/dark cycle, but in the absence of such cues our internal physiology starts to drift. The body clock of SAD sufferers may lose synchronization under the shorter periods and lower levels of winter light. Exposure to one to two hours of bright light in the morning often can help correct this disruption and alleviate SAD symptoms. A link between the occurrence of cataracts—clouding in the eye that leads to visual loss—and the development of SAD further suggests that light detection by the eye is key in this disorder. Puzzlingly, some people who are completely blind—lacking the eye’s photoreceptors known as rods and cones—can experience SAD. A decade ago scientists at Cornell University proposed that humans can detect light through their skin. But when researchers in the Netherlands tested this idea by exposing just the skin of SAD patients to bright light, they found the treatment had no effect at all. How, then, are they detecting light? © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Depression; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 12711 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In the sci-fi movie Men in Black, Tommy Lee Jones could erase a person's memory with a flash from his hand-held "Neuralizer." Neuroscientists aren't quite there yet. Their most successful attempts at memory wiping have involved genetic engineering or injecting drugs into the brains of rodents. Now researchers report a less invasive approach: a form of exposure therapy that makes rats forget a fearful association. The findings may eventually help improve treatments for people with phobias or post-traumatic stress disorder. The new approach combines two methods previously shown to weaken memories of fear, says first author Marie Monfils, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas, Austin. One method, called extinction training, involves repeated exposures to a previously scary stimulus--a tone previously paired with a shock, for example--to dull the stimulus's impact. Extinction training is the basis of exposure therapy for people with debilitating phobias, but its effects aren't permanent. Another method, called reconsolidation blockade, seems to have more lasting effects. It involves prompting a rat (or person) to recall a scary memory and then administering a drug to weaken it (ScienceNOW, 25 October 2004). Researchers think this works because a memory becomes briefly vulnerable to manipulation each time it's recalled. But many of the drugs that have proven effective in rodent studies are toxic, limiting their therapeutic potential in people. Monfils hypothesized that combining elements of both methods might yield lasting effects without the use of toxic drugs. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 12710 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Susan Milius Count your chickens after they hatch, and they may do a little arithmetic themselves. Chicks only 3 or 4 days old manage an animal version of adding and subtracting, says Rosa Rugani of the University of Trento Center for Mind/Brain Sciences in Rovereto, Italy. Inspired by experiments with human babies, Rugani and her colleagues worked out tests based on adding objects to and taking them away from little piles behind screens. With no special math coaching, the chicks did a decent job of keeping track of object shifts representing such problems as 4 – 2 = 2 and 1 + 2 = 3, she and her colleagues report online March 31 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. “This is the first demonstration of adding and subtracting in young animals” other than humans, Rugani says. Other animals, including some primates and dogs, have demonstrated numerical powers as adults. Karen Wynn of Yale University, who has reported evidence of numerical skills in human babies, points out that the chicks haven’t had a chance to learn or develop much. “This work, then, is a compelling existence proof that numerical understanding comprises a built-in system of unlearned knowledge,” Wynn says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Evolution; Intelligence
Link ID: 12709 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Stem cells that could be used to restore hearing have been successfully created, scientists have said. A Sheffield University team took stem cells from embryos and converted them into cells that behave like sensory hair cells in the human inner ear. Their discovery could ultimately help those who have lost hair cells through noise damage and some people born with inherited hearing problems. But any cure is still some years away, experts told the journal Stem Cell. The Sheffield team is now working on the next stage of the research to check if the cells can restore hearing. Currently, hair cell damage is irreversible and causes hearing problems in some 10% of people worldwide. Embryonic stem cells could change this because they have the unique ability to become any kind of human cell. Not only could they be used to replace the lost hair cells, but also any damaged nerve cells along which the signals generated by the hair cells are transmitted to the brain. But the use of stem cells is controversial - opponents object on the grounds that it is unethical to destroy embryos in the name of science. Lead researcher Dr Marcelo Rivolta, said: "The potential of stem cells is very exciting. We have now an experimental system to study genes and drugs in a human context. "Moreover, these cells would help us to develop the technologies needed to deliver them into damaged tissues, such as the cochlea, in order to restore the different cell types. Dr Ralph Holme, director of biomedical research at RNID, said: "Stem cell therapy for hearing loss is still some years away but this research is incredibly promising and opens up exciting possibilities by bringing us closer to restoring hearing in the future." Vivienne Michael of Deafness Research UK said: "This study highlights the importance of stem cell research. In addition to the future potential for restoring hearing with stem cell therapy, the recent research success means that we may now have better ways to test the efficacy and toxicity of new drugs on auditory cells." (C)BBC

Keyword: Hearing; Stem Cells
Link ID: 12708 - Posted: 04.02.2009

by Caroline Williams By the time we take our first breath, the brain is already more than eight months old. It starts to develop within four weeks of conception, when one of three layers of cells in the embryo rolls up to form the neural tube. A week later the top of this tube bends over, creating the basic structure of fore, mid and hindbrain. From this point, brain growth and differentiation is controlled mainly by the genes. Even so, the key to getting the best out of your brain at this stage is to have the best prenatal environment possible. In the early weeks of development, that means having a mother who is stress-free, eats well and stays away from cigarettes, alcohol and other toxins. Towards the end of the brain-building process, when the fetus becomes able to hear and remember (see "The five ages of the brain: 2 Childhood"), sounds and sensations also begin to shape the brain. In the first two trimesters of pregnancy, though, development is all about putting the basic building blocks in place: growing neurons and connections and making sure each section of the brain grows properly and in the right area. This takes energy, and a variety of nutrients in the right quantity at the right time. In fact, if you consider the size of the construction job at hand - 100 billion brain cells and several million support cells in four major lobes and tens of distinct regions - it is a truly staggering feat of evolutionary engineering. One nutrient we know the brain needs early on is folic acid, which is crucial for closing the neural tube. Deficiencies can lead to defects like spina bifida, where part of the spine grows outside the body, and anencephaly, a fatal condition in which much of the brain fails to develop. There's some evidence that vitamin B12 deficiency has similar effects (Pediatrics, vol 123, p 917). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12707 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY Concern about the safety of hormone replacement has all but obscured one of the most pressing concerns for women of a certain age: the effects of menopause on their sex lives. Many are reluctant to ask their doctors a question uppermost in their minds: “What has happened to my desire for sex and my ability to enjoy it?” With fully a third of their lives ahead of them, but with little or none of the hormones that fostered what may have been a robust sex life, many postmenopausal women experience diminished or absent sexual desire, difficulty becoming aroused or achieving orgasm, or pain during intercourse caused by menopause-related vaginal changes. Sometimes the reasons for these problems go beyond hormones. Some women may consider themselves less sexually attractive as their bodies change with age, or they have partners who have lost interest in sex or the ability to perform reliably. But for most postmenopausal women, hormone-related changes are the primary factors that interfere with sexual satisfaction. My friend Linda, for example, who lives in Pittsburgh, was 52 years old and recently married when her vibrant interest in sex suddenly plummeted, leading to a frantic search for a way to restore it. A more common situation is described by Pat Wingart and Barbara Kantrowitz in their informative book, “Is It Hot in Here or Is It Me?” (Workman, 2006): “You’re not in the mood a lot of the time. Most nights, you just wish your partner would roll over and go to sleep. When you do feel like a little action, it takes forever to get warmed up. Sometimes sex is more painful than pleasurable.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12706 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NICHOLAS WADE Researchers studying the social behavior of ants have found that a single gene underlies both the aggressive behavior of the ant colony’s soldiers and the food gathering behavior of its foraging caste. The gene is active in soldier ants, particularly in five neurons in the front of their brain, where it generates large amounts of its product, a protein known as PKG. The exact amount of the protein in the ants’ brains is critical to their behavior. Low levels of PKG predispose both castes of ant to foraging; high levels make the soldiers fight and the foraging caste less interested in food gathering, Christophe Lucas and Marla B. Sokolowski report in the current issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The soldier and foraging castes in the species of ant under study, known as Pheidole pallidula, have their career choices settled in infancy when they start to be fed different diets. The soldiers develop large heads and jaws, and go on to guard the colony and kill invaders. The foragers, who remain small, specialize in looking for food and bringing back prey to the nest. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12705 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Linda Geddes "Moonwalking" mice may provide insights into the genetic causes of a rare debilitating condition called cerebellar ataxia. The illness affects the cerebellum – the part of the brain that controls movement and balance. The mice, which are engineered to express a mutated protein that causes neurons in the cerebellum to die, move backwards when they try to walk forwards on a smooth surface. The same neurons are destroyed in cerebellar ataxia, which causes unsteadiness and loss of co-ordination. Moonwalking – made famous by Michael Jackson – is a dance move where someone appears to walk forwards but actually slides backwards. The mice seem to do it because they place their feet further apart than normal as they walk, in order to maintain their balance. Humans with cerebellar ataxia have trouble coordinating their movements, although "I don't think there are any human patients out there who walk backwards," says Esther Becker of the University of Oxford, who led the study. "The million dollar question is whether mutations of this gene also occur in humans with cerebellar ataxia," says Becker, who is currently screening patients with genetic forms of the condition to find out. If they do, it could pave the way towards new treatments. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12704 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Coco Ballantyne About a year ago, a 42-year-old male gorilla named Fubo living in the Bronx Zoo's Congo Gorilla Forest suffered a seizure for no apparent reason. Concerned about his condition, zoo veterinarians put him on several seizure-controlling medications, which seemed to work, because he didn't have any more occurrences on the meds. But they were worried about the cause: Did Fubo have a brain tumor, a stroke or perhaps some kind of injury? To find out, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which runs the Bronx Zoo in New York City, contacted the Brain Tumor Foundation (BTF), a nonprofit that provides free brain scans to people living in New York's five boroughs—especially those who cannot afford medical care and want to be screened for possible brain tumors. Furry and weighing 275 pounds (125 kilograms), Fubo was no typical patient, but the BTF was willing to give it a go. On February 25, workers arrived at the zoo in BTF's Bobby Murcer Mobile MRI Unit, a trailer housing a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, which uses magnetic fields and radio waves to generate images of structures inside the body. (The MRI-on-wheels is named after the late Bobby Murcer, the New York Yankees All-Star outfielder who went on to become a radio commentator, and who died last year from brain tumor complications.) The whole process of sedating the gorilla, running the scan, and returning him to the Gorilla Forest took about three and a half hours, says veterinarian Paul Calle, director of the WCS's Zoological Health Program. "He was very stable and did well," Calle says, noting that Fubo is now back with his family and doing just fine. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 12703 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sandra G. Boodman Weeks after his hip replacement surgery, Solomon Berkman started going downhill fast. The 70-year-old retired aerospace engineer, who had prided himself on his mental acuity, became vague and forgetful, unable to work the crossword puzzle that had been his daily routine. Usually gregarious, Berkman became nearly mute in social situations. He developed urinary incontinence and began falling, necessitating emergency calls to the police because his wife, Pat, was unable to hoist him. At times his behavior was inexplicably bizarre. Berkman once fell asleep in the shower, where his wife discovered him after an hour. Although doctors agreed he was deteriorating mentally and physically, they differed on the possible causes. One suspected Parkinson's disease. Another thought he might be showing signs of dementia or early Alzheimer's. A third thought his hip surgery and a second procedure to clean out his blocked carotid artery might be partly responsible. Yet none of the doctors seriously considered the real, and ultimately treatable, reason for Berkman's decline. "It felt like we were losing him," his oldest son, Robert Berkman, recalled. "The whole thing put tremendous strain on my mother." Today, nine years later, Berkman, who lives in Lebanon Township, N.J., suffers from none of the problems that had so disabled him. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12702 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Steve Connor, Science Editor Computer and video games that involve guns and shooting may not do much for a child's education but they can improve eyesight, according to a study showing that a person's night-time vision gets better after playing electronic action games. Scientists found that games involving aiming and shooting at virtual objects on a computer screen can significantly increase people's ability to see objects in twilight conditions, when colours fade into different shades of grey. Until now the only recognised way of improving a person's ability to detect small changes in shades of grey – visual "contrast" – was to improve the optics of the eye with contact lenses, spectacles or surgery. But researchers have found that training on a video game can be just as effective, if not more so. "Unfortunately, contrast sensitivity is one of the aspects of vision that is most easily compromised," said Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester in New York, who led the study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. "This problem affects thousands of people worldwide, including those with professional activities requiring excellent eyesight, and ageing populations, along with individuals who are clinically evaluated for vision problems such as amblyopia," Professor Bavelier said. "Normally, improving contrast sensitivity means getting glasses or eye surgery, somehow changing the optics of the eye. But we have found that action video games train the brain to process the existing visual information much more efficiently. The improvements last for months after game play has stopped." ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 12701 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LINDSEY TANNER CHICAGO -- An influential government-appointed medical panel is urging doctors to routinely screen all American teens for depression _ a bold step that acknowledges that nearly 2 million teens are affected by this debilitating condition. Most are undiagnosed and untreated, said the panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which sets guidelines for doctors on a host of health issues. The task force recommendations appear in April's issue of the journal Pediatrics. And they go farther than the American Academy of Pediatrics' own guidance for teen depression screening. An estimated 6 percent of U.S. teenagers are clinically depressed. Evidence shows that detailed but simple questionnaires can accurately diagnose depression in primary-care settings such as a pediatrician's office. ad_icon The task force said that when followed by treatment, including psychotherapy, screening can help improve symptoms and help kids cope. Because depression can lead to persistent sadness, social isolation, school problems and even suicide, screening to treat it early is crucial, the panel said. The task force is an independent panel of experts convened by the federal government to establish guidelines for treatment in primary-care. Its new guidance goes beyond the pediatrics academy, which advises pediatricians to ask teen patients questions about depression. Other doctor groups advise screening only high-risk youngsters. © 2009 The Associated Press

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12700 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower When 2-year-olds with autism look at someone’s face, they may crave synchronized detection rather than social connection. Toddlers with this developmental condition track sounds and sights that occur together, such as a mother’s lips moving in time with sounds coming out of her mouth, rather than social cues, such as the gleam in that same mother’s eyes, a new study suggests. Locked in a world of co-occurring sound and motion, youngsters with autism neglect social signals that critically contribute to mental and brain development, propose psychologist Ami Klin of Yale University’s Child Study Center and his colleagues. “Our findings lead us to the rather sad hypothesis that a toddler with autism might watch a face but not necessarily experience a person, since so much of that experience involves mutual eye gaze,” Klin says. The new study, published online March 29 in Nature, indicates that by age 2, kids with autism don’t notice the array of cues indicating that a body is moving. Non-autistic children do so within days of birth. Young animals in many species, from humans to birds, monitor signs of movement by others as cues to initiate social contact. While earlier studies have suggested that children with autism often don’t look at other people’s eyes, it’s been unclear why this behavior occurs. Few studies have included toddlers or infants with autism, who are difficult to diagnose. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 12699 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The raising of the school leaving age to 15 over 50 years ago could go some way to reducing dementia rates in the elderly, a study has suggested. A Cambridge University team compared the mental abilities of elderly people, and found those born after the change fared better. They say that further changes to the school leaving age could improve mental abilities and curb dementia rates more. Experts said more information on how education affected dementia was needed. Around 700,000 people in the UK currently have dementia. Experts have estimated that by 2051, the number could stand at 1.7m. In this study, researchers compared a group of over 9,000 people aged over 65 tested in 1991 with over 5,000 over-65s tested in 2002. They were all given a standard test used to detect early signs of dementia, which involves naming as many animals as possible within a minute. The researchers identified a small but potentially significant increase in the number of words a minute people used in the later group. Poor cognitive function is known to be linked to developing dementia, and it is already known that dementia is less likely in people who been educated for longer. Previous research has shown that education is beneficial because it increases the number of neural connections in the brain. The school leaving age was set at 15 in 1947, rising to 16 in 1972. The government announced two years ago that, by 2015, teenagers would have to stay in education or training until they were 18. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12698 - Posted: 03.28.2009

By Shankar Vedantam New data from a large federal study have reignited a debate over the effectiveness of long-term drug treatment of children with hyperactivity or attention-deficit disorder, and have drawn accusations that some members of the research team have sought to play down evidence that medications do little good beyond 24 months. The study also indicated that long-term use of the drugs can stunt children's growth. The latest data paint a very different picture than the study's positive initial results, reported in 1999. One principal scientist in the study, psychologist William Pelham, said that the most obvious interpretation of the data is that the medications are useful in the short term but ineffective over longer periods but added that his colleagues had repeatedly sought to explain away evidence that challenged the long-term usefulness of medication. When their explanations failed to hold up, they reached for new ones, Pelham said. "The stance the group took in the first paper was so strong that the people are embarrassed to say they were wrong and we led the whole field astray," said Pelham, of the State University of New York at Buffalo. Pelham said the drugs, including Adderall and Concerta, are among the medications most frequently prescribed for American children, adding: "If 5 percent of families in the country are giving a medication to their children, and they don't realize it does not have long-term benefits but might have long-term risks, why should they not be told?" © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: ADHD; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12697 - Posted: 06.24.2010