By JOHN TIERNEY In the new issue of Nature, the neuroscientist Larry Young offers a grand unified theory of love. After analyzing the brain chemistry of mammalian pair bonding — and, not incidentally, explaining humans’ peculiar erotic fascination with breasts — Dr. Young predicts that it won’t be long before an unscrupulous suitor could sneak a pharmaceutical love potion into your drink. That’s the bad news. The not-so-bad news is that you may enjoy this potion if you took it knowingly with the right person. But the really good news, as I see it, is that we might reverse-engineer an anti-love potion, a vaccine preventing you from making an infatuated ass of yourself. Although this love vaccine isn’t mentioned in Dr. Young’s essay, when I raised the prospect he agreed it could also be in the offing. Could any discovery be more welcome? This is what humans have sought ever since Odysseus ordered his crew to tie him to the mast while sailing past the Sirens. Long before scientists identified neuroreceptors, long before Britney Spears’ quickie Vegas wedding or any of Larry King’s seven marriages, it was clear that love was a dangerous disease. Love was correctly identified as a potentially fatal chemical imbalance in the medieval tale of Tristan and Isolde, who accidentally consumed a love potion and turned into hopeless addicts. Even though they realized that her husband, the king, would punish adultery with death, they had to have their love fix. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12432 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By James Ritchie Elephants do not have the greatest eyesight in the animal kingdom, but they never forget a face. Carol Buckley at The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn., for instance, reports that in 1999 resident elephant Jenny became anxious and could hardly be contained when introduced to newcomer Shirley, an Asian elephant. As the animals checked one another out with their trunks, Shirley, too, became animated and the two seemingly old friends had what appeared to be an emotional reunion. "There was this euphoria," sanctuary founder Buckley says. "Shirley started bellowing, and then Jenny did, too. Both trunks were checking out each other's scars. I've never experienced anything that intense without it being aggression." Turns out the two elephants had briefly crossed paths years earlier. Buckley knew that Jenny had performed with the traveling Carson & Barnes Circus, before coming to the sanctuary in 1999, but she knew little about Shirley's background. She did a little digging, only to discover that Shirley had been in the circus with Jenny for a few months—23 years earlier. Remarkable recall power, researchers believe, is a big part of how elephants survive. Matriarch elephants, in particular, hold a store of social knowledge that their families can scarcely do without, according to research conducted on elephants at Amboseli National Park in Kenya. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Evolution
Link ID: 12431 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rob Stein In addition to subprime mortgages, credit default swaps and lax government oversight, another factor may need to be added to the list of culprits responsible for the economic meltdown: testosterone. A new study has found that men who were programmed in the womb to be the most responsive to testosterone tend to be the most successful financial traders, providing powerful support for the influence of the hormone over their decision-making. "Testosterone is the hormone of irrational exuberance," said Aldo Rustichini, a professor of economics at the University of Minnesota who helped conduct the study being published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The bubble preceding the current crash may have been due to euphoria related to high levels of testosterone, or high sensitivity to it." While it may come as no surprise that testosterone could be a big player in the mano-a-mano world of Wall Street, the research offers the best evidence yet of the hormone's role in determining which would-be Masters of the Universe will thrive. It also supports the growing recognition of the role that biology plays in complex human behaviors, and that economic choices in particular are often less rational than economists appreciated. © Copyright 1996-2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Emotions; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12430 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have produced more evidence that carrying the wrong variant of a single gene can raise the risk of overeating and obesity. Several studies have suggested that carrying one of two variants of the FTO gene make overeating more likely. A University College London team found children carrying one or two of these variants were more likely to binge on biscuits after eating a meal. The study appears in the International Journal of Obesity. The researchers hope their work will shed more light on why some children become overweight or obese. They believe a greater understanding of the impact of specific genes paves the way for new therapies to minimise their effect. It is thought that more than half the European population carries at least one of the two key FTO variants. A previous study found children who carry one specific variant of the FTO gene eat an average of 100 extra calories per meal. They were more likely to eat food loaded with sugar and fat, rather than more healthy options. However, a separate study found vigorous physical activity could blunt the effects of carrying the key FTO variants. In the latest study, the UCL team offered 131 four to five-year-olds a mixed plate of sweet and savoury biscuits within one hour of finishing a full meal. Those who carried one or two of the key FTO variants were more likely to tuck in despite the fact that they should have been full. Lead researcher Professor Jane Wardle said: "We believe this research tells us more about how some children are more responsive to signals in their bodies encouraging them to eat when full than others. "Knowing how the genes work is the first step to minimising these negative effects. The occasional treat won't do us any harm - but this study showed that some children don't know when to stop - which could lead to the onset of obesity and a lifetime of health problems. Children with higher risk versions of the gene might be helped if parents do their bit to keep temptations out of the home." (C)BBC

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12429 - Posted: 01.12.2009

Scientists have found a genetic risk factor for late onset Alzheimer's disease which is carried only by women. The discovery is the first evidence to suggest that genetics may partly explain why more women than men tend to develop the disease. The key variant was found in a gene on the X chromosome, of which females have two copies, but males only one. The study, by the US-based Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, features in the journal Nature Genetics. The Mayo team carried out a detailed genetic analysis of patients with Alzheimer's diease. They identified a particular variant of a gene called PCDH11X which appeared to be closely linked to a higher risk of the disease. However, further analysis showed that the association was almost entirely restricted to women. The raised risk of Alzheimer's was not statistically significant in men who carried one copy of the rogue gene variant, and only marginally so in women with just one copy. But the raised risk was much more significant in women who carried two copies - one inherited from each parent. PCDH11X controls production of a protein called a protocadherin, part of a family of molecules that help cells in the central nervous system to communicate with each other. Some evidence has suggested that protocadherins may be broken down by an enzyme which has been linked to some forms of Alzheimer's disease. Lead researcher Dr Steven Younkin said it was likely that many genes contributed to the overall risk of Alzheimer's, and that age was probably a more significant factor. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 12428 - Posted: 01.12.2009

The four-eyed spookfish may have seemed strange enough. Now researchers say it doesn't really have four eyes. Instead, it is the first known vertebrate to use mirrors, rather than lenses, to focus light in its eyes. “In nearly 500 million years of vertebrate evolution, and many thousands of vertebrate species living and dead, this is the only one known to have solved the fundamental optical problem faced by all eyes — how to make an image — using a mirror," said Julian Partridge from the University of Bristol. While the spookfish looks like it has four eyes, in fact it has only two, each of which is split into two connected parts. One half points upwards, giving the spookfish a view of the ocean — and potential food — above. The other half, which looks like a bump on the side of the fish's head, points down. These diverticular eyes, as they are called, are unique among all vertebrates in that they use mirrors to make the image, Partridge and colleagues found. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here Very little light penetrates the ocean's waters below a depth of about a half-mile (1 kilometer). Like many other deep-sea fish, the spookfish is adapted to make the most of what little light there is. The spookfish largely looks for flashes of bioluminescent light from other animals. The diverticular eyes image these flashes, warning the spookfish of other animals that are active, and otherwise unseen, below its vulnerable belly. © 2009 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 12427 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By RANDALL STROSS E-MAILING now comes so naturally to us that we can do it in our sleep — at least in the exceptional case. An article that will soon appear in the journal Sleep Medicine, detailing the experience of a sleepwalker, shows that we can send messages even when we seem to be sound asleep. Such e-mailing interests neurologists who specialize in sleep science. After all, it poses a challenge to the accepted notion that sleepwalking is confined to activities involving gross motor movements, with minimal cognitive activity. Until now, we have been able to take comfort in our understanding of our own sleepwalking as an impersonal phenomenon. Whether it is eating junk food, rearranging furniture or even driving a car, the body carries out the action, seemingly on its own, while the mind slumbers, blissfully unaware. Legal doctrine is based on this same notion. Sleepwalkers have been acquitted of criminal felony charges by basing their defense on the concept of “noninsane automatism.” E-mailing while sleeping, however, upturns the previous understanding of the mind as essentially quiescent, absolved of a participating role. The Sleep Medicine article — prepared by Dr. Fouzia Siddiqui, a neurologist at the University of Toledo Medical Center in Ohio, and two colleagues — describes one woman’s e-mailing while sleeping as the first reported case of “complex nonviolent cognitive behavior.” It involved not just composing messages, but also navigating past two separate levels of password security to reach the e-mail software. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 12426 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It may, in the future, be possible to treat brain diseases with ultrasound THE idea of treating maladies of the mind by blasting the brain with noise sounds, to the layman, like kicking a television set in order to repair it. It is, however, on the cards. The noise in question is ultrasound. This has been used for decades to scan human interiors—particularly wombs containing developing fetuses. The ultrasound is reflected from surfaces within the body (such as the skin of a fetus) in the way that audible sound echoes from a cliff face. William Tyler and his colleagues at Arizona State University, however, want to take things a stage further. They think that ultrasound might be used therapeutically as well. The team knew from experiments done by other groups of researchers that ultrasound can have a physical effect on tissue. Unfortunately, that effect is generally a harmful one. When nerve cells were exposed to it at close range, for example, they heated up and died. Dr Tyler, however, realised that all of the studies he had examined used high-intensity ultrasound. He guessed that lowering the intensity might allow nerve cells to be manipulated without damage. To test this idea, he and his colleagues placed slices of living mouse brain into an artificial version of cerebrospinal fluid, the liquid that cushions the brain. They then beamed different frequencies of low-intensity ultrasound at the slices and monitored the results using dye molecules that give off light in response to the activity of proteins called ion channels. (An ion channel is a molecule that allows the passage of electrically charged atoms of sodium, potassium, calcium and so on through the outer membrane of a cell.) © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2008.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 12425 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Stephen J. Dubner What do Bruce Pardo and Atif Irfan have in common? In case you’re not familiar with their names, let me rephrase: What do the white guy who dressed up as Santa and killed his ex-wife and her family (and then committed suicide) and the Muslim guy who got thrown off a recent AirTran flight on suspicion of terrorism have in common? The answer is that both of them had their intentions badly misread. The one who should have been scary to people who knew him wasn’t; and the one who scared the people who didn’t know him turned out to not be scary at all. As we’ll see below, this is a common pattern. But before going forward, let me first backtrack a bit. Pardo was a churchgoer whom no one pegged as a homicidal maniac. “He’s a totally different person from what you hear and see on the news for what he did,” said a family friend named Amanda Dunn. “I’m shocked, literally, I’m shocked. I can’t believe that’s actually the same guy.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 12424 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Sarah Boseley A prenatal screening test for autism comes closer today as new research is published that links high levels of the male hormone testosterone in the womb of pregnant women to autistic traits in their children. The ground-breaking study, published in the British Journal of Psychology by some of Britain's leading autism researchers, was prompted by the fact that autism is four times more common in boys than in girls. It is linked with other traits that are found more commonly in boys, such as left-handedness. For more than eight years, a team at Cambridge University's autism research centre has been observing and testing the development of a group of 235 children whose mothers had an amniocentesis during pregnancy. The procedure involves drawing off fluid surrounding the baby in the womb using a fine needle and is offered by hospitals to pregnant women over 35 or 37 to test for Down's syndrome. The age and circumstances of the women have been taken into account in the research. Dr Bonnie Auyeung, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues, who publish their findings today, say they have consistently found a link between higher testosterone levels in the womb and autistic traits, such as a lack of sociability and verbal skills, in the children. These are not autistic children, but many of us have traits that are more pronounced in those who have a medical diagnosis. Autism has been described as a consequence of an extreme male brain. Those affected do not empathise easily with other people (as girls tend to do more readily than boys). They cannot guess what other people are thinking or feeling. They have a much stronger drive towards analysis and constructing systems and can have a great ability to focus on something that absorbs them. People with autism include some brilliant, albeit eccentric and reclusive, mathematicians and musicians, as well as children who are never able to communicate and may end up in an institution. © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Keyword: Autism; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12423 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Matt Kaplan Among most mammals, being the biggest and meanest is the only way to become the alpha male with a choice of mates. But in chimpanzee society, it seems that being nice can be just as powerful. Grooming among chimpanzees has been proposed by some primatologists to be a strategy for solidifying relationships within groups1. Yet in spite of the many studies exploring this, no one had determined whether chimpanzees use grooming as a tactic for obtaining alpha status. Indeed, the conventional view, based largely on anecdotal evidence, is that bigger and tougher is better. Researchers at the University of Minnesota's Jane Goodall Institute Center for Primate Studies have now collated ten years of behavioural data on three male chimpanzee in Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Chimpanzees within the park have been routinely weighed by park staff2, allowing Mark Foster and his team from the institute to work out which tactics chimpanzees of dramatically different sizes used both before and after they became alpha males. Carrying 51.2 kilograms at his peak, Frodo, the second-largest male ever weighed at Gombe, proved to be the quintessential bully. With consistent high rates of aggression, including attacks on the researchers, he was alpha male from 1997-2003. But one of Gombe's smallest males, a 37-kilogram chimpanzee named Wilkie, followed a different path. Foster and his team noticed that Wilkie was an obsessive groomer, attending to others far more often than his rivals did. He also spent most of his time grooming his female partners, unlike most alpha males who only receive grooming from their partners. Yet, in spite of his lesser size and gentler nature, Wilkie held alpha status from 1989–92. © 2009 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Aggression; Evolution
Link ID: 12422 - Posted: 06.24.2010

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love ... but whither when the year is young? It matters not, for as long as the hormones are in tune, love can bloom at any time, say scientists who study the genetics and neurobiology of animals whose family lives shed new light on human sexuality. Larry J. Young, a Georgia neurobiologist, studies the genes and hormones of the cute but often pestiferous little beasts called prairie voles, which mate and bond for life. Those genes and hormones exist in humans, too, and in a uniquely literate essay in today's issue of the journal Nature, Young points to the role they play in animals and humans. "Poetry it is not. Nor is it particularly romantic. But reducing love to its comprehensive parts helps us understand human sexuality and may lead to drugs that enhance or diminish our love for another," he said. Young, a professor in the psychiatry department at Emory University in Atlanta and the Yerkes National Primate Research Center there, has discovered that two closely related peptide hormones called oxytocin and vasopressin play powerful roles in both animal and human sexuality. "I call oxytocin the motherly hormone," Young said in an interview, "because its release in the body of female voles is involved in uterine contractions, in lactation and in the mother's early bonding with vole babies. It's also the hormone responsible for lifelong pair bonding between males and females. © 2009 Hearst Communications Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12421 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have developed new ways to cool heart attack and stroke victims' brains to protect them from brain damage. UK doctors believe that cooling could save lives by slowing the release of harmful chemicals from nerve cells, and many hospitals have adopted the idea. Among the inventions, reported in New Scientist magazine, is a cap that blows cold air across the scalp. Other innovations include a chilling nasal spray and an icy lung injection. Many intensive care units across the UK now use cooling techniques to help heart attack patients after two major research studies showed significant benefits. This "therapeutic hypothermia" is normally induced using cooled pads, ice packs or even injecting chilled saline liquid into the blood stream. However, researchers are hunting for ways to achieve the necessary 4C drop more efficiently - or targeting only the brain itself. The first of the new devices, developed at the University of Edinburgh, is a cooling helmet which works by passing cold air across the scalp, exploiting the dense network of blood vessels there. Tests on volunteers, reported in The British Journal of Anaesthesia suggested that the hood was able to cool the brain by 1C per hour. In the US, scientists are working on other quicker ways to achieve this, one by spraying a fine mist of droplets deep into the nasal cavity. The liquid used, perfluorocarbon, evaporates rapidly, taking heat away from the area, and cooling the brain as a result - by up to 2.4C per hour. A trial in pigs suggested this might not just reduce the chance of brain damage, but also improve the chances of successful resuscitation. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 12420 - Posted: 01.10.2009

by Celeste Biever Autistic savant Daniel Tammet shot to fame when he set a European record for the number of digits of pi he recited from memory (22,514). For afters, he learned Icelandic in a week. But unlike many savants, he's able to tell us how he does it. We could all unleash extraordinary mental abilities by getting inside the savant mind, he tells Celeste Biever Do you think savants have been misunderstood - and perhaps dehumanised - in the past? Very often the analogy has been that a savant is like a computer, but what I do is about as far from what a computer does as you can imagine. This distinction hasn't been made before, because savants haven't been able to articulate how their minds work. I am lucky that the autism I have is mild, and that I was born into a large family and had to learn social skills, so I am able to speak up. When did you first realise you had special talents? At the age of 8 or 9. I was being taught maths at school and realised I could do the sums quickly, intuitively and in my own way - not using the techniques we were taught. I got so far ahead of the other children that I ran out of textbooks. I was aware already that I was different, because of my autism, but at that point I realised that the relationship I had with numbers was different. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 12419 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nathan Seppa Brain surgeon Kenneth Follett had never received thank-you cards from his patients after performing an operation — until he started putting electrodes in their brains. Follett, who holds positions at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Omaha, is among a select group of surgeons who over the past decade have been treating Parkinson’s disease by installing two tiny electrodes in a patient’s brain. The change these devices induce can be astonishing, he says. Parkinson’s is characterized by brain degeneration, marked by a shortage of the neurotransmitter dopamine. That shortage results in movement problems. After surgery, many patients are suddenly able to get around, do household chores and even go shopping, Follett says. “It has the potential to change people’s lives.” Follett’s firsthand observations are now supported by clinical research. He and a team of fellow surgeons and scientists report in the Jan. 7 Journal of the American Medical Association that Parkinson’s patients randomly assigned to get medication plus the surgery show dramatic improvements, whereas patients getting just the best available medication do not. The surgery, called deep-brain stimulation, isn’t new, having been first approved by regulators in 1997. But only one other study — reported by German scientists in 2006 — has tested the surgery against medication in a large, randomized trial. That study also showed benefits in patients who received both surgery and medication (SN: 9/2/06, p. 149). © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 12418 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Doctors should try not to prescribe antipsychotic drugs for elderly people with Alzheimer's, geriatricians said following new research that concluded taking people taking the medications had double the risk of dying during the course of the study. Anti-psychotic medications are sometimes given to control symptoms of dementia in elderly patients, such as wandering and aggressiveness. Generally, the drugs work by subduing the patients, making them easier to manage in facilities such as nursing homes. In the study appearing in Friday's issue of the medical journal Lancet Neurology, researchers followed 165 patients in Britain aged 67 to 100 with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease from 2001 to 2004. Half of the participants continued taking their antipsychotic medications, including Risperdal (risperidone), Thorazine (chlorpromazine) and Stelazine (trifluoperazine). The other half got placebos. During the three-year study, seniors given a placebo were 42 per cent less likely to die than those who stayed on anti-psychotic medications, Clive Ballard of the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases at King's College London and his colleagues said. "I definitely think the results here are significant, and they reinforce some previous studies," said Dr. David Conn, vice-president of medical services and academic education at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care in Toronto. "We definitely need to pay attention to the results." © CBC 2009

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Alzheimers
Link ID: 12417 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Constance Holden The next time you spot an old friend from across the room, thank oxytocin. Researchers have shown that the brain hormone helps us sense whether a face is familiar. Oxytocin is a powerful social chemical. In voles, for example, the hormone is key to attachment behavior: Males with higher levels of oxytocin are more likely to be faithful to their mates. Humans also make use of the hormone. Oxytocin helps us maintain our trust in others, even when they have done us wrong (ScienceNOW, 21 May 2008) Curious about other effects of oxytocin in people, psychologist Ulrike Rimmele of the University of Zurich in Switzerland and colleagues tested the hormone's role in social memory. The team recruited 44 heterosexual men and gave half of them a nasal spray spiked with oxytocin. The researchers then asked the men to look at 168 pictures--half of them of people and half of objects, such as houses and paintings--for a few seconds. The men then had to rate how much they would like to approach each person or object on a scale of one to seven. The next day, the researchers tested the men's memories by presenting them with the pictures they had already seen, along with 72 new photos. Oxytocin did not appear to affect subjects' approachability ratings, for either faces or objects, the researchers will report tomorrow in The Journal of Neuroscience. However, it did influence whether they recognized familiar faces. The oxytocin-treated subjects picked out 46% of faces they had seen before compared with 36% for the control group. And men who'd received oxytocin were more accurate than the controls in determining which faces they had never seen. There was no difference between the two groups in object recognition. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Emotions; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12416 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Laura Sanders Mosquitoes use their own kind of eHarmony to find a compatible mate. New research shows that male and female mosquitoes sing duets of matching love songs by vibrating their wings. The annoying recordings of mosquito duets aren’t likely to go platinum, but they give researchers some interesting new ways to think about courtship behavior in insects. The study, published online January 8 in Science, finds that male and female Aedes aegypti — carriers of dengue and yellow fever — change the pitch of their buzzing to match each other’s harmonics. The results go “way beyond the accepted dogma on hearing in mosquitoes and perhaps indeed in other organisms,” comments Daniel Robert, an expert on insect hearing at the University of Bristol in England. A female mosquito’s come-hither buzz, produced by vibrating her wings at a certain rate, is irresistible to males. Scientists have long thought that male mosquitoes could hear just enough sound to locate and home in on a female, says coauthor of the new study Ronald Hoy, of Cornell University. What’s more, females were thought to be totally deaf. The importance of female behavior in animals has been overlooked until the last few decades, says Hoy. “The assumption was that it’s all about the guys,” he says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Animal Communication
Link ID: 12415 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia are typically seen as afflicting the elderly, but new data suggests an increasing number of baby boomers are also being struck by the brain-destroying diseases. Of the half-million Canadians affected by various forms of dementia, about 71,000 — or almost 15 per cent — are under age 65, says a study by the Alzheimer Society of Canada. Of those, about 50,000 are 59 or younger. "We know that we're finding far more individuals in their 50s and 60s who have dementia," said society CEO Scott Dudgeon. "We're talking about dementia generally, including Alzheimer's disease." The rising tide of cases among these not-quite seniors as well as their older counterparts threatens to swamp the health-care system and severely affect the economy, Dudgeon warns. "I guess the thing that's most dramatic when you look at the numbers is this grey tsunami that people have been talking about … seems to be arriving now," he said. "And when you start looking at the number of people who are going to be developing dementia over the next few years, the impact is going to be tremendous." With Canada's aging population, the society predicts that within five years, an additional 250,000 people could be diagnosed with Alzheimer's or another dementia. By 2040, that number could swell to between one million and 1.3 million. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 12414 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By RONI CARYN RABIN Spikes in blood sugar can take a toll on memory by affecting the dentate gyrus, an area of the brain within the hippocampus that helps form memories, a new study reports. High glucose seemed to affect the dentate gyrus, part of the hippocampus (shaded). Researchers said the effects can be seen even when levels of blood sugar, or glucose, are only moderately elevated, a finding that may help explain normal age-related cognitive decline, since glucose regulation worsens with age. The study, by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center and funded in part by the National Institute on Aging, was published in the December issue of Annals of Neurology. “If we conclude this is underlying normal age-related cognitive decline, then it affects all of us,” said lead investigator Dr. Scott Small, associate professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center. The ability to regulate glucose starts deteriorating by the third or fourth decade of life, he added. Since glucose regulation is improved with physical activity, Dr. Small said, “We have a behavioral recommendation — physical exercise.” In the study, researchers used high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging to map brain regions in 240 elderly subjects. They found a correlation between elevated blood glucose levels and reduced cerebral blood volume, or blood flow, in the dentate gyrus, an indication of reduced metabolic activity and function in that region of the brain. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Stress
Link ID: 12413 - Posted: 06.24.2010