LONDON - AstraZeneca's cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor cut the risk of stroke by nearly half in seemingly healthy patients, according to a new study. The medical trial involving 17,802 patients found even those with low levels of cholesterol benefited from daily treatment with Crestor. The results were presented at the American Stroke Association meeting in San Diego yesterday. The study resembles earlier findings from the company-funded study, which showed Crestor slashed the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death by 47 percent. All of the patients had high levels of protein called hsCRP, an indicator of inflammation. The data "clearly demonstrate that statin therapy reduces stroke risk among individuals with elevated levels of hsCRP," Robert Glynn, of the division of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said in a statement. Crestor is from the medicine class known as statins. AstraZeneca plans to file for expanded approval of the drug in the first half of this year. Over five years, 33 patients who took Crestor in the study suffered a stroke, compared with 64 of those getting a placebo. The drug prevented strokes caused by clots that block blood flow the brain, the researchers said. © Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 12576 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kay Lazar Children of parents with Alzheimer's disease can develop memory problems in their 50s or even younger - much earlier than previously thought - according to a large study released yesterday by researchers at Boston University School of Medicine. The study subjects, who carried a gene strongly linked to Alzheimer's, performed worse in memory tests, on average, than other middle-aged people who had the same gene but did not have a parent diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The difference in memory between the two groups was equivalent to approximately 15 years of brain aging, researchers found.. "How big an effect we saw was surprising," said Dr. Sudha Seshadri, a BU associate professor of neurology and senior author of the study. "It was like you were comparing two groups, 55-year-olds to 70-year-olds." Researchers not involved with the study say the findings have broad implications because they are the first to demonstrate changes in cognitive abilities years before the age at which the degenerative brain disease is diagnosed. By the time the most common form of Alzheimer's is confirmed, usually around age 75, it has irreparably damaged large sections of the brain's memory center. The BU findings do not suggest that everyone with the gene, known as APOE-e4, will develop Alzheimer's, said Seshadri. The gene is believed to play a role in about 50 percent of Alzheimer's cases. The study also did not address whether the people showing early memory impairment were destined to develop Alzheimer's. © 2009 NY Times Co

Keyword: Alzheimers; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12575 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nathan Seppa Mutations in two genes, IDH1 and IDH2, might provide markers that enable doctors to discern malignant from benign brain tumors and catch some cancers early, scientists report in the Feb. 19 New England Journal of Medicine. The study adds to a growing list of molecular clues that doctors may ultimately use to diagnosis and treat cancers, says study coauthor D. Williams Parsons, a pediatric oncologist and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Doctors diagnose nearly 200,000 brain cancers each year in the United States. Most get their start elsewhere in the body and spread to the brain. But in about 22,000 of these patients, the cancer originates in the brain or central nervous system. These primary brain tumors are most often gliomas — clusters of tumor cells that derive from the brain’s glial cells. Gliomas vary in virulence from benign (grade 1) to fast-growing and rapidly lethal (grade 4). The IDH genes are so-named because they encode an enzyme called isocitrate dehydrogenase. While the role of the enzyme is poorly understood, the mutations in IDH genes attracted interest after turning up last year in brain tumors but not in other cancer tissues. In the new study, the researchers tested samples of benign and cancerous primary brain tumors removed from 445 people and from tumors obtained from 494 others who had cancers of the colon, prostate, pancreas, breast, stomach, ovary or blood (leukemia). © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Glia
Link ID: 12574 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Solmaz Barazesh A lot of stress can turn your hair gray, but a little stress can actually delay aging. A protein tied to protecting cells from stress also helps slow aging, a new study finds. The research, published February 20 in Science, identifies a key regulator of a mechanism cells use to prevent protein damage from stress. Exposure to heat, cold or heavy metals can damage proteins and unravel them from their usual conformations — trauma that can cause cell death. But cells have a damage-limiting mechanism called the heat shock response to combat these and other stresses. As part of the heat shock response, special protein repair molecules patch up the damaged proteins and refold them correctly, preventing death and extending the life of the cell. Molecular biologist Sandy Westerheide of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and her colleagues found that the heat shock response in human cell lines is regulated by Sirtuin 1, or SIRT1, an aging-related protein. It’s the first evidence linking SIRT1 to the protein-protecting heat shock response. “This is a very interesting and insightful study,” comments Raul Mostoslavsky, a cell biologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston. “We knew that Sirtuin 1 had many roles in longevity. It’s remarkable that it also affects heat shock response.” The study focused on individual cells, but for whole organisms the finding could shed light on a link between stress and life span. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 12573 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Diane Mapes Some people wet the bed. Cynthia MacGregor wet her boyfriend. “I was in bed with my then-boyfriend, one leg over his leg and I woke up and found myself peeing on him,” says 65-year-old MacGregor, a freelance writer and editor from Palm Springs, Fla. “He was a good sport about it, but I was embarrassed as all bloody hell.” MacGregor’s episode with nocturnal enuresis — involuntary bed-wetting — took place 30 years ago, after the radiation treatment she received for her cervical cancer left her with temporary urinary incontinence. A talk with her urologist and a few months of medication helped her beat the bed-wetting — and the urgency and frequency issues that went with it — but others haven’t been as fortunate, primarily because they haven't been as forthcoming. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here About 26 million American adults are currently affected by urinary incontinence, according to the Simon Foundation for Continence. Of those, an estimated 1 to 2 percent experience bed-wetting, either as an issue that’s carried over from childhood (i.e., primary enuresis) or a secondary condition that’s developed in adulthood due to a neurological disorder, prostate obstruction, diabetes, overactive bladder, complications from childbirth or other medical issues. But some believe that number is low. © 2009 Microsoft

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 12572 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Katharine Sanderson A simple change to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines will provide more uniform coverage at higher powers as well as more room for portly patients. In a market set to be worth more than $5 billion by 2010, the new technology may offer an easier way to get to the high-field machines manufacturers and clinicians see as the next target for hospital imaging. MRI machines use a magnetic field to get hydrogen atoms in the body spinning in a particular way, then knock them off-balance with a radio wave. The small radio-frequency signals given off by the recovering nuclei provide the imaging data. In their new version of the technology, Klaas Pruessmann at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, his student David Brunner and their colleagues removed the radio-frequency coil used to tumble the nuclei from an MRI machine built by Philips Healthcare and replaced it with a system that could do the same job from up to 5 metres away. The university has filed for patents on the technology, which is described on page 994 of this issue. "It's a completely new approach to exciting the signal in MRI," says Andrew Blamire, an MRI expert at the nuclear magnetic resonance centre in Newcastle, UK. "Claustrophobia is a widespread problem in clinical MRI," says Pruessmann. Removing the coil from the machine provides a less constraining cavity. But the potential advantages go further than the patient experience. The easily made change of approach may allow designers of increasingly powerful MRI machines to overcome some of the technical hurdles that trouble them. © 2009 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 12571 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Viegas While svelte, petite women may attract multiple suitors, bigger is definitely better in the whale world, according to a new study that found male humpback whales favor the largest females. Big in terms of humpback whales means gigantic, since females are usually larger than males to begin with, measuring up to around 50 feet long and weighing approximately 79,000 pounds. "While obesity is understandably a serious problem in humans, it is interesting to find that in some of the largest animals ever to exist, bigger is indeed better. Thus size does matter!" said lead author Adam Pack, an assistant professor of psychology and biology at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here Pack, who is also the co-founder and vice president of The Dolphin Institute, and his research team made the determination after studying courting humpback whales for five consecutive years in the waters of the Auau, Kalohi and Pailolo channels off West Maui. The findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior. In winter and spring months, the whales assemble on shallow banks and along coastal areas for breeding and calving. Since females produce a single calf every two to three years on average, and not all females migrate to breeding grounds, males usually far outnumber females at the sites. © 2009 Discovery Channel

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 12570 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER Most human vices have enough sense to be very, very tempting. Lust, gluttony, sloth, hurling powerful if unimaginative expletives at a member of the political opposition, buying a pair of Thierry Rabotin snakeskin printed shoes at 25 percent off even though you just bought a pair of cherry-red slingbacks last week — all these things feel awfully good to indulge in, which is why people must be repeatedly abjured not to. One vice, however, dispenses with any hedonic trappings and instead feels so painful you would think it was a virtue, except that there’s no gain in lean muscle mass at the end: envy. Skulking at sixth place on traditional lists of the seven deadly sins, right between wrath and pride, envy is the deep, often hostile resentment you feel toward somebody who has something you want, like wealth, beauty, a promotion or the admiration of peers. It is a vice few can avoid yet nobody craves, for to experience envy is to feel small and inferior, a loser shrink-wrapped in spite. “Envy is corrosive and ugly, and it can ruin your life,” said Richard H. Smith, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky who has written about envy. “If you’re an envious person, you have a hard time appreciating a lot of the good things that are out there, because you’re too busy worrying about how they reflect on the self.” Now researchers are gleaning insights into the neural and evolutionary underpinnings of envy, and why it can feel like a bodily illness or a physical blow. They’re also tracing the pathway of envy’s equally petty foil, the sensation of schadenfreude — taking pleasure when those whom you envied are themselves brought down low. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12569 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by David Robson DO WE all have the capacity for synaesthesia or is the brain's ability to blend senses bestowed on a select few at birth? It now seems it could be a mixture of the two. Synaesthesia seems to underpin some savants' enhanced memory and numerical skills. The hope is that a better understanding of its origins could help to explain savant abilities - and perhaps even shine some light on whether we are all capable of attaining them. The condition is thought to arise when extra connections in the brain cross between regions responsible for separate senses. To see if genes play a role in building or maintaining these connections, a team led by Julian Asher at the University of Oxford took genetic samples from 196 individuals from 43 families, 121 of whom exhibited auditory-visual synaesthesia, meaning they "see" sounds. "When I hear a violin, I see something like a rich red wine," says Asher, who is a synaesthete. "A cello is more like honey." From their analysis, the team were able to pin down four chromosomal regions where gene variations seemed to be linked to the condition (The American Journal of Human Genetics, DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2009.01.012). As one of the regions has also been associated with autism, there may be a common genetic mechanism underlying the two, says Asher. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12568 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Emma Young TAKE anyone with a psychiatric disorder and the chances are they don't sleep well. The result of their illness, you might think. Now this long-standing assumption is being turned on its head, with the radical suggestion that poor sleep might actually cause some psychiatric illnesses or lead people to behave in ways that doctors mistake for mental problems. The good news is that sleep treatments could help or even cure some of these patients. Shockingly, it also means that many people, including children, could be taking psychoactive drugs that cannot help them and might even be harmful. No one knows how many people might fall into this category. "That is very frightening," says psychologist Matt Walker from the University of California, Berkeley. "Wouldn't you think that it would be important for us as a society to understand whether 3 per cent, 5 per cent or 50 per cent of people diagnosed with psychiatric problems are simply suffering from sleep abnormalities?" First, we'd need to know how and to what extent sleep disorders could be responsible for psychiatric problems. In the few years since sleep researchers identified the problem, they have made big strides in doing just that. Doctors studying psychiatric disorders noticed long ago that erratic sleep was somehow connected. Adults with depression, for instance, are five times as likely as the average person to have difficulty breathing when asleep, while between a quarter and a half of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) suffer from sleep complaints, compared with just 7 per cent of other children. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sleep; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 12567 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Solmaz Barazesh The first experimental study in humans connecting beta-blockers and memory suggests these drugs, usually taken to treat heart conditions, can also wipe away the emotions associated with frightening memories. The power of such memories could be dampened when a person thinks about the traumatic events after taking the drugs, scientists say. Clinical psychologist Merel Kindt of the University of Amsterdam and her colleagues report the new finding online February 15 in Nature Neuroscience. The research builds on a clinical study published in the May 2008 Journal of Psychiatric Research that suggested beta-blockers helped patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. “Kindt’s work confirms our clinical results and goes further by showing beta-blockers also have this effect” on people who had no previous history of mental health issues, comments Alain Brunet, psychiatrist at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute at McGill University in Montreal and a coauthor of the PTSD study. Kindt and her colleagues showed subjects a photograph of a spider, which was accompanied by an electric shock, conditioning the participants to have a fearful memory of the image. Later, some participants were given a beta-blocker drug, propranolol, and others were given a placebo before being exposed to the image again. The beta-blocker group’s fear response was greatly reduced or even eliminated when the subjects were shown the spider photograph 24 hours after taking the drugs. “The people did not forget seeing the photograph of the spider,” Kindt says. ”But the fear associated with the image was erased.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 12566 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Sunita Reed We’re all familiar with sweet, salty, bitter and sour tastes. But how many of us have heard of umami (pronounced oo-MAH-mee)? The so-called “fifth taste” is found in soups, meats, seafood and cheese. Now researchers at Senomyx, a San Diego based food flavor additive company, have made a discovery that could lead to new ways to make packaged foods harder to resist. Until recently scientists used to say we could sense only four basic tastes; sweet, salty, bitter and sour. But chefs worldwide have long known about umami taste. One hundred years ago, a Japanese chemistry professor, Kikunae Ikeda recognized that the dominant taste in a soup base called dashi was distinct from the four officially named basic tastes. Dashi is made by boiling a seaweed called kombu. Ikeda isolated the source of the taste and identified it as glutamate, a type of amino acid. He called it “umami,” derived from the Japanese word “umai,” meaning delicious. Ikeda developed a method to make a crystallized form of it called monosodium glutamate or MSG. The Ajinomoto company subsequently mass-produced the product. But it took many years for the larger scientific community to acknowledge umami as a basic taste. In 2000, University of Miami researcher Nirupa Chaudhari and colleagues discovered a type of umami receptor on the human tongue. It was only then that scientists began to acknowledge umami as an official basic taste. Glutamates are found naturally in many protein rich foods like meats and seafood but also in tomatoes, shitake mushrooms, fermented products like soy sauce and certain aged cheeses. ©2009 ScienCentral

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 12565 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By WILLIAM YARDLEY SEATTLE — Washington State law prohibits the possession of marijuana except for certain medical purposes. Hempfest is not one of them. Yet each summer when the event draws thousands to the Seattle waterfront to call for decriminalizing marijuana, participants light up in clear view of police officers. And they rarely get arrested. “Police officers patrolling are courteous and respectful,” said Alison Holcomb, drug policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. One reason for the officers’ approach, said Ms. Holcomb and others who follow law enforcement in Seattle, is the leadership of R. Gil Kerlikowske, the chief of the Seattle Police Department and, officials in the Obama administration say, the president’s choice to become the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, known as the drug czar. The anticipated selection of Chief Kerlikowske has given hope to those who want national drug policy to shift from an emphasis on arrest and prosecution to methods more like those employed in Seattle: intervention, treatment and a reduction of problems drug use can cause, a tactic known as harm reduction. Chief Kerlikowske is not necessarily regarded as having forcefully led those efforts, but he has not gotten in the way of them. “What gives me optimism,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, “is not so much him per se as the fact that he’s been the police chief of Seattle. And Seattle, King County and Washington State have really been at the forefront of harm reduction and other drug policy reform.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12564 - Posted: 06.24.2010

James Morgan It's one of the most fabled talents in the animal world – elephants' ability to "talk" via rumbles in the earth. Now zoologists in Namibia are trying to harness these seismic social calls - to lure rampaging males back to safety. They played the low rumble of a female on heat to bulls in must (a state of sexual readiness), who turned and headed for the vibration source. The tool could help save elephants from Etosha National Park from the risk of violent conflicts with farmers. The trials are being led by Dr Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell, of Stanford University. She told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago that park rangers are "very excited" about the prospect of using the technique to protect the endangered animals. "The bulls in must were very responsive. We have shown that we can set the elephants on a very specific trajectory," said Dr O'Connell-Rodwell. "At the watering hole, we waited for them to arrive, and then used the calls to set them on one path, and then turn them back round again. "You see the male in the video pressing his trunk against the ground. He's on a mission – he's looking for that female in oestrus," she said. "The response was intense and so directed. We were not expecting such intensity. "We suggest this could be used as a tool by the park rangers – to help the elephants to stay out of trouble. "The Namibian Environment Ministry is very interested," Dr O'Connell-Rodwell added. Elephants are renowned for their ability to detect vibrations through the ground at great distances. These include the mating calls of females who are in oestrus – or on heat, a phase which only occurs every five years. (C)BBC

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 12563 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By James Morgan It is the ultimate "gentleman's agreement". Rather than compete for females, male long-tailed manakins co-operate with their friends. The tropical birds pair up to perform a courtship song and dance, but the alpha male gets the girl every time. Meanwhile his "wingman" spends five years playing second fiddle. But he eventually inherits the mating site. The dance, dubbed "backwards leapfrog", was filmed in Costa Rica by zoologists from the University of Wyoming. At first glance, it appears like a competitive "dance-off". But in fact it is a co-operative pact between buddies, says Dr David McDonald, of Wyoming University. "As far as I know it is the only example of male-male [mating] co-operation in the animal kingdom," he told delegates at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Chicago. "The male birds' partnership lasts up to five years. During that time, the beta male does not copulate. "He has to wait until alpha male dies - he doesn't kick him out. So he may be waiting until he's 10, 15 or even older." The wingman may be equally as good at dancing as the alpha. Nevertheless, he agrees to forego sex and let his buddy take the spoils. In return, he will eventually inherit the mating site and become the alpha himself. The deal could be compared to Gordon Brown and Tony Blair's infamous "Granita pact". At the London restaurant, Brown allegedly agreed to support Blair in his bid for Prime Minister, on condition that he would eventually inherit the reins. "It's a rough life for a beta male manakin," concedes Dr McDonald. "But if he hits the jackpot he is one of the most successful vertebrates on the planet earth." (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 12562 - Posted: 02.16.2009

by Linda Geddes Phobias and post-traumatic stress could be banished for good by taking a commonly prescribed drug for blood pressure. Previous studies had suggested that people who experienced traumatic events such as rape and car crashes showed fewer signs of stress when recalling the event if they had first been injected with the beta blocker propranolol, but it was unclear whether the effect would be permanent or not. Fearful memories often return, even after people have been treated for them. To investigate whether propranolol could stop fear returning in the longer term, Merel Kindt and her colleagues at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, conditioned 60 healthy students to associate a picture of a spider with an electric shock, so that they would eventually be startled by the picture even in the absence of a shock. However, if the conditioned students were given oral propranolol before seeing the picture, their startle response was eliminated. What's more, it didn't return when the students were put through a second round of conditioning that should have reinstated their fear – suggesting that the association may have been permanently broken. Those given a placebo pill could eventually be trained not to be startled by the spider picture, by repeatedly showing it to them in the absence of a shock. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 12561 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey CHICAGO – With all due respect to the old song, a kiss is not just a kiss. Scientists say romantic kissing affects hormones involved in stress and attachment, and may help people determine whether they’ve found “the one.” Researchers discussed the science of smooching at a press conference February 13 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. More than 90 percent of human societies practice kissing, says Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. Chimpanzees kiss too. And even those who don’t kiss still have a lot of facial contact with others. This leads Fisher to believe that kissing probably offers some evolutionary advantage. Men tend to prefer wetter, open-mouth kisses with lots of tongue action, Fisher notes. This style of kissing may allow men to transfer more testosterone to their female partners to put the ladies in the mood. The open-mouth kiss may also help the guys figure out where a woman is in her menstrual cycle. “This really is a powerful assessment tool,” Fisher says. “A first kiss can kill a relationship.” Couples that get past the first kiss aren’t done with kissing chemistry, though. Wendy Hill of Lafayette College in Easton, Penn., and her students brought 15 heterosexual couples into the student health center for a kissing experiment. Each of the volunteers drooled into a cup before the experiment began so the researchers could measure levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the saliva samples. Researchers also took blood samples to measure levels of oxytocin, a hormone associated with bonding. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 12560 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Exposure to second-hand smoke may increase the risk of developing dementia, according to a study by British and American researchers. While scientists have long suspected a link between smoking and cognitive impairment, the study is the first large-scale attempt to link second-hand smoke to increased risk for cognitive impairment. In a study in Thursday's online British Medical Journal, researchers with the universities of Cambridge and Michigan tested saliva samples of nearly 5,000 non-smokers over age 50. They were looking for cotinine — a product of nicotine that can be found in saliva for about a day after exposure to smoke. Participants were also assessed for brain function and cognitive impairment. The study found people with the highest cotinine levels had a 44 per cent increased risk of cognitive impairment, compared to people with the lowest cotinine levels. The researchers argue the link between second-hand smoke and cognitive impairment could be explained, given that heart disease increases the risk of developing dementia and second-hand smoke exposure is known to cause heart disease. In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Mark Eisner from the University of California said while the serious negative health effects of second-hand smoke like cancer and premature death have been established beyond doubt, there is still a lot to learn about the scale of illness caused by second-hand smoke. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Alzheimers
Link ID: 12559 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey CHICAGO — An international group of scientists has completed the first rough draft of Neandertal’s genetic instruction manual. The genetic evidence suggests that humans and Neandertals are very similar, but that the two species probably didn’t interbreed. Speaking by video teleconference from Leipzig, Germany, scientists led by Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology announced the achievement to reporters gathered at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Pääbo said that the team has decoded 3.7 billion bases of Neandertal DNA from a bone of a female Neandertal fossil discovered in Vindija cave in Croatia. That DNA represents about 63 percent of the total Neandertal genome. “It’s a milestone,” says John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The announcement was not a surprise, and the team decoding the Neandertal genome has presented updates of its progress and some of its findings at scientific meetings, but Hawks and other scientists are looking forward to the public release of the Neandertal genome data, expected later this year. Analysis of the genome reveals that humans and Neandertals share genetic roots stretching back at least 830,000 years. Neandertals, the species Homo neandertalensis, were humans’ closest relatives, appearing about 300,000 years ago and living in Europe and parts of Asia until going extinct about 30,000 years ago. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Evolution; Language
Link ID: 12558 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Music may be the analgesic of the art world. A recent study done at Glasgow Caledonian University found that people who were listening to their favourite music felt less pain and could stand pain for a longer period. Pain researcher Laura Mitchell has measured how people respond to pain with various forms of distractions, including relaxing music, listening to humorous audio tapes, doing math puzzles and looking at art. As she told CBC's Q cultural affairs show, music is the stimulus that most seems to keep people's minds off the pain. "Favourite music has come out consistently, even to an extent that's really surprised me in designing these studies, as being extremely effective in how people can tolerate the pain and in actually reducing how much pain they feel," Mitchell said. But not just any music — it's not the relaxing jazz playing in the dentist's office or the classical piped into the clinic waiting room that does people good, but their own personal favourite. "I've done this now with about … 400 people and there doesn't seem to be anything in common between the pieces that they bring," Mitchell said. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Hearing
Link ID: 12557 - Posted: 06.24.2010