A virtual "body double" system has been developed to help people regain movement after a stroke by highlighting the muscles they are using. Pioneered by Dutch researchers, the system displays an image of the person training and the force at which they are using their muscles on a screen. The Human Body Model is being tested at the Sheba Hospital in Tel Aviv, Israel, reports the New Scientist. It is the latest in a series of virtual reality physiotherapy treatments. The user must don a suit which has 47 reflective markers pointing to specific muscles. They then undertake exercise such as running or walking on a treadmill or pushing weights while infrared lights and cameras are used to track the markers. Sensors on the floor are also used to measure the force applied to the ground by the user's feet. This information is then fed into a computer and the results projected onto a screen. "It allows you to see the muscle groups you are using in real time, and even the forces they are creating, which are usually invisible," says Oshri Even-Zohar, who developed the system. But he conceded it could not show every muscle at work. "There is no tool in medical science that allows you to measure all the muscle forces in motion." (C)BBC

Keyword: Stroke; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 12456 - Posted: 01.17.2009

People who drink too much coffee could start seeing ghosts or hearing strange voices, UK research has suggested. People who drank more than seven cups of instant coffee a day were three times more likely to hallucinate than those who took just one, a study found. A Durham University team questioned 200 students about their caffeine intake, the journal Personality and Individual Differences reported. However, academics say the findings do not prove a "causal link". They also stress that experiencing hallucinations is not a definite sign of mental illness and that about 3% of people regularly hear voices. "This is the first step toward looking at the wider factors associated with hallucinations," said psychology PhD student Simon Jones, who led the study. He said previous research had suggested factors such as childhood trauma could be linked to hallucinations. When under stress, the body releases a hormone called cortisol which is produced in greater quantities after consuming caffeine. The extra cortisol boost could be what causes a person to hallucinate. Therefore, Mr James added, it made sense to examine the link between caffeine and mood. Besides coffee, sources such as tea, chocolate, "pep" pills and energy drinks contain caffeine. After asking the students about their typical intake, the research team assessed their susceptibility to hallucinatory experiences and stress levels. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12455 - Posted: 01.17.2009

By Claudia Kalb Science is rich with happy flukes. Remember the story of penicillin? Alexander Fleming discovered the bacteria-destroying mold by accident when he left a culture dish uncovered in his lab in 1928. Eight decades later, here's another one: a Googlesoftware program called SketchUp, which was intended largely for architects and design professionals, has found a very unexpected and welcome fan base—children with autism. SketchUp is not only entertaining kids with autism spectrum disorders, it's providing them with skills that might one day help them as they age out of school and into the workforce. It all started when Google's Tom Wyman and Chris Cronin started getting enthusiastic calls and e-mails from architects who had children on the spectrum. Their kids, the parents reported, had discovered the software program and loved it. All they needed was their creativity and a computer mouse and they could design entire neighborhoods. It turns out that SketchUp, which was acquired by Google from a small Colorado-based startup in 2006, allows people with autism to express their ideas in a visual way—a welcome release for kids who have trouble communicating through speech or writing. "After the second or third call, you begin to think there may be something here," says Wyman. So he contacted his local chapter of the Autism Society of America (ASA) in Boulder. "What gives?" he asked. What gives is that many people with autism excel at visual thinking. Studies show they perform exceptionally well on the Block Design Task, part of a standard IQ test, which assesses an individual's ability to recreate a complicated red and white pattern using a set of red and white blocks. "They're able to mentally segment the design into its component parts so they can see where each block would go," says Ellen Winner, a professor of psychology at Boston College, something non-autistic kids have trouble doing. © 2009 Newsweek, Inc.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 12454 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It started when Levi Barron's right hand curled into a claw shortly after his 13th birthday. Always laid-back, he told his mom that he'd just learn to write with the other hand and not to worry. But the debilitating stiffness crept to his other hand, and soon the athletic hockey player was having trouble walking and even fell a few times. It took four doctors and a stint in hospital, paralyzed from the waist down and so dizzy he couldn't open his eyes without vomiting, for Levi to finally get a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. "I remember just being so frightened and upset that I didn't know that kids got MS," says Karen Barron, Levi's mom. Once thought of as a young adult disease striking people in their 20s or 30s, it is increasingly being recognized that multiple sclerosis can actually emerge much earlier, says Jon Temme, vice-president of client services and research for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada. "Certainly the likelihood of a child being diagnosed accurately is much greater now than it would have been a decade ago." © CBC 2009

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12453 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kay Lazar Now, research suggests that the song was essentially right, and illustrates just how the brain manages to dismiss negative memories but retain the positive ones as we get older. A team of researchers from Duke University and University of Alberta took two groups of volunteers - one in their mid-20s, one in their 70s - and showed them photos that were either neutral or very negative, depicting such things as mutilated bodies or sick children. Later, the participants were unexpectedly asked to recall the images. The older group had a harder time recalling the negative images than the younger group, and brain scans revealed the differences in brain activity between the two groups. The study - which points to possible ways to improve memory in aging adults - appears in the January issue of Psychological Science. Peggy St. Jacques, the Duke University graduate student in psychology and cognitive neuroscience who is the lead author, said there are primal reasons why seniors tend to take a dim view of unpleasant memories. "As we age, we have a more limited perspective of the time we have left," she said, "so we may focus more on things that increase our emotional well-being." In practical terms, that might mean that an older person's memory of the family reunion will focus on the delights of the grandchildren playing on the lawn, not the shouting match at lunch over their divorcing parents' custody battle. Or on the glow of the sunset over the dunes, not the litter scattered across the sand. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 12452 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By INGFEI CHEN Contrary to popular belief, premenstrual syndrome does not bedevil all women. In the days before their menstrual period begins, an estimated 20 to 40 percent of women experience changes like bloating, headaches and crankiness that are bothersome enough to be called PMS. A far smaller slice of the female sex — just a few percent — suffer severe mood symptoms that would qualify as premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD. For these women, life is roiled at work, home and in social relationships for a week or so each month as an emotional rollercoaster plunges them into profound sadness or takes them to peaks of frustration or anxiety. But the troubles vanish after menstruation begins. The very existence of this severe form of PMS is, however, an old — and ongoing — flashpoint of controversy. PMDD stirred passionate protests 20 years ago, when the American Psychiatric Association considered adding the diagnostic category to the 1994 edition of its clinical practice bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM. Women’s health activists argued that the diagnosis pathologized the menstrual cycle and would stigmatize many women by wrongly labeling them mentally ill, and put them in jeopardy of discrimination at the workplace or in child custody battles. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 12451 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Rebecca Renner The Los Angeles Times brought a startling discovery to the public’s attention in 2005: during a small monitoring survey off the coast of Southern California, scientists found male flatfish with female characteristics. The intersex fish were found in the vicinity of the three massive wastewater outfalls that dump treated sewage effluent into the Pacific Ocean and serve the booming metropolis of Los Angeles and adjacent Orange County. As a result, the scientists hypothesized that the discharges−almost 4 billion gallons a day from more than 10 million people−were disrupting the endocrine systems of the fish. Flash forward to November 2008 and the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), where biologist Steve Bay with the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP) summed up the 2005 findings. “We knew that the results were not statistically significant, but all the intersex fish were found between the Los Angeles and Orange County outfalls” he said. The numbers were small: in total, 82 male hornyhead turbot and English sole were caught at 30 sites along 600 miles of coastline. Eleven out of 64 caught in the vicinity of the outfalls had ovary tissue in their testes. No such sexual defects were found elsewhere. Additional studies appeared to support these findings. Two-thirds of the male turbot and sole caught near Orange County’s sewage outfall had vitellogenin, or egg-producing proteins, more commonly found in female fish (Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2003, 22, 1309−1317). In laboratory experiments, male fish exposed to ocean sediment collected from the same area all produced vitellogenin (Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2005, 11, 2820−2826). © 2009 American Chemical Society

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12450 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Coco Ballantyne A new study suggests that if schizophrenia runs in a family, there's a good chance that bipolar disorder does as well (and vice versa). The findings, published today in the journal The Lancet, suggest that the two disorders are caused by some of the same genes. "These findings say that [schizophrenia and bipolar disorder] are related, above all, for genetic reasons," says lead study author Paul Lichtenstein, a genetic epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. "[Therefore] it might not be a good idea to view these disorders as separate entities." Lichtenstein and his colleagues (researchers from both the U.S. and Sweden) scoured the entire Swedish population for anyone with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder by reviewing psychiatric discharge data from all Swedish hospitals between 1973 and 2004. They identified 35,985 people with schizophrenia (0.40 percent of the population) and 40,487 people with bipolar disorder (0.45 percent of the population). To figure out if and how some of these patients were related, the researchers searched for these individuals in Sweden's multi-generation register, a population database that links nearly every person born in Sweden (population: around 9 million) to his or her parents. This way, they were able to identify parents, children and siblings who shared the diseases. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12449 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Wild capuchin monkeys don’t thoughtlessly grab any handy piece of stone to crack open hard-shelled nuts at snack time. These slender, agile primates select the best tool for the job, a new study finds. Much like people, capuchins translate past experiences into action, say primatologist Elisabetta Visalberghi of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies in Rome and her colleagues. These monkeys draw on a reservoir of knowledge about a variety of stones and nuts to select suitable nut-cracking implements, the scientists assert in a study published online January 15 in Current Biology. Capuchins make mental plans for fracturing a particular nut before selecting an appropriate stone for the task, Visalberghi’s team proposes. “The present findings make capuchins a compelling model to track the evolutionary roots of stone-tool use,” Visalberghi says. Because capuchins last shared a common ancestor with humans approximately 35 million years ago, the team writes, the capacity for stone-tool use evolved earlier than thought. In Visalberghi’s investigation, wild monkeys living in a forested area of Brazil individually approached two or three stones that differed in hardness, size or weight. One stone was best for cracking nearby palm nuts. Nearly all the time, animals chose the superior stone. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Evolution; Intelligence
Link ID: 12448 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas -- Fish aren't known for their impressive singing ability, although some can grunt and hum, yet singing originated in lungfish, according to new research that also determined how songbirds consistently produce melodious, sweet tunes. In the future, the findings may lead to better human singing, as well as improved treatments for speech impediments, since humans and birds sing using similar techniques. "Babies go through several phases of learning before they fully speak -- like babbling, one word, two words, etc. -- and so do songbirds," co-author Tobias Riede told Discovery News. Riede, a researcher at the National Center for Voice and Speech, explained that young songbirds also "babble," producing sub-songs, before they create more varied "plastic" songs and then graduate to bird crooning perfection with their adult songs. "Both babies and songbird chicks need a tutor or they don't pick up the adult version," he added. "Part of that learning is exercising motor patterns." Riede and colleague Roderick Suthers focused on one such motor pattern, articulation, to explore the origins of singing and how birds, in particular, make their sounds. They placed white-throated sparrows in an X-ray machine at Indiana University and watched the inside of each bird's throat area as it sang. The sparrow's song is often described by birdwatchers as, "Oh sweet Canada, Canada, Canada," since it resembles a few notes in the Canadian national anthem. © 2009 Discovery Communications

Keyword: Language; Animal Communication
Link ID: 12447 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Duncan Graham-Rowe THE eyes may be the windows to the soul, but they also make pretty good peepholes into the brain. Thanks to an optical version of ultrasound, it is becoming possible to locate and monitor the growth of brain tumours, and to track neurodegenerative conditions like multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease - all by peering into the eye. The brain is connected to each eye by an optic nerve, so any degeneration of the brain caused by such diseases can also damage cells along the nerve and in the retina, says Helen Danesh-Meyer, an eye surgeon and neuro-ophthalmologist at the University of Auckland Medical School in New Zealand. Indeed, a loss of visual function is one of the first symptoms in many people with a neurodegenerative condition. Although evidence of a link between degeneration of the optic nerve and diseases such as Alzheimer's has been around since the late 1980s, without instruments capable of measuring the retinal changes accurately it is only recently that this knowledge could be put to use, says Danesh-Meyer. The accuracy of ophthalmological tools has greatly improved in the last few years. Developments include a type of laser-camera technique called Heidelberg retina tomography (HRT), and a laser device called GDx, both of which can be used to scan the shape and thickness of optical nerve fibres at the back of the eye. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Vision; Alzheimers
Link ID: 12446 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A relatively new area of the brain's cerebral cortex evolved to enable humans and other primates the necessary small motor skills to pick up small objects and deftly use tools, scientists now say. In most animals, including cats, rats and some monkeys, the brain's primary motor cortex controls all movements indirectly through the circuitry of the spinal cord, said researcher Peter Strick, professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Pittsburgh's Veterans Affairs Medical Center. But in humans, some monkeys and the great apes that use tools, another area of the motor cortex developed and is now home to a special set of cortico-motoneuronal (CM) cells, Strick explained. These cells directly control spinal cord motor neurons, which are the nerve cells responsible for causing contraction of shoulder, elbow and finger muscles. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here The direct control exerted by CM cells bypasses the limitations imposed by spinal cord circuitry and permits the development of highly complex patterns of movement, such as the finger action needed to type. "What we've shown is that along with evolution of direct control over motor neurons, a new cortical area has evolved that's right next to the old one," Strick said. © 2009 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 12445 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY and RONI CARYN RABIN The popular drugs known as atypical antipsychotics, prescribed for an array of conditions, including schizophrenia, autism and dementia, double patients’ risk of dying from sudden heart failure, a study has found. The finding is the latest in a succession of recent reports contradicting the long-held assumption that the new drugs, which include Risperdal, Zyprexa and Seroquel, are safer than the older and much less expensive medications that they replaced. The risk of death from the drugs is not high, on average about 3 percent in a person being treated at least 10 years, according to the study, published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine. Nor was the risk different from that of the older antipsychotic drugs. But it was significant enough that an accompanying editorial urged doctors to limit their prescribing of antipsychotic drugs, especially to children and elderly patients, who can be highly susceptible to the drugs’ side effects, including rapid weight gain. In recent years, the newer drugs, which account for about 90 percent of the market, have become increasingly controversial, as prescription rates to children and elderly people have soared. Doctors use the drugs to settle outbursts related to a host of psychiatric disorders, including attention deficit disorder and Alzheimer’s disease. Most are not approved for such use. After an analysis of study data, the Food and Drug Administration required that all antipsychotics’ labels contain a warning that the drugs were associated with a heightened risk of heart failure in elderly patients. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 12444 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Christof Koch We take the magical gift of consciousness for granted. From the time I awaken until I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep, I am flooded with conscious sensations. And contrary to assertions made by philosophers, novelists and other literati, by and large this stream of consciousness does not relate to quiet self-reflection and introspective thoughts. No, most of it is filled with raw sensations. Two weeks ago a friend and I climbed a sea cliff above the Pacific surf at Malibu, Calif. When I am on the sharp end of the rope, my inner critic—that voice in my head reminding me of deadlines, worries and my inadequacies—is gone, is silent. My mind is all out there—conscious of the exact orientation, shape and texture of the rock, looking for tiny indentations where I can get purchase for my fingers and toes, always aware of how high I am above the last bolt. One moment I am exquisitely aware of my feet on all too smooth rock, reaching upward with my left hand for a handhold. The next I am airborne, my right hand bloody, my right rib cage aching. After catching my breath and shouting to my anxious belayer that I’m okay, I am filled with adrenaline for having survived yet another fall, can’t contain my enthusiasm, and scream. Today only the bruised rib remains as a testament to how much of the stream of consciousness is pure sensation. Whether you are weaving on a motorbike through flowing traffic, running in the mountains, dancing to fast rock and roll, reading an engaging book, making love or debating with your friend, your eyes, ears, skin and body sensors paint an engrossing picture of the outside, including your own body, onto your mind’s canvas. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12443 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Coco Ballantyne Drugs traditionally used to treat depression are also effective in easing widespread pain, sleep disturbances and dismal moods associated with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), according to a large-scale analysis published today in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association. The study confirms earlier research about the meds' effect on symptoms associated with this mysterious disease. Fibromyalgia, an often overlooked disorder believed to cause widespread muscle pain, sleep disturbances, depression and fatigue, affects up to 12 million people (4 percent of the U.S. population), nearly 11 million of them women. The degree of debilitation caused by the disease ranges "from very little to total," says Roland Staud, a professor of medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville, adding that he has known some patients who have been bedridden for as long as a year because of symptoms, which typically appear between ages 40 and 60 and may last for the remainder of sufferers' lives. Researchers do not know the cause of FMS and there is currently no cure. But psychiatrist Leslie Arnold, director of the Women's Health Research Program at the University of Cinncinnati's College of Medicine, says that both genetics and stress appear to play a role. Only two drugs have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat fibromyalgia—Cymbalta made by Eli Lilly (one of the antidepressants reviewed in this study) and Pfizer's Lyrica, an Rx to control seizures and pain. There is no definitive test for fibromyalgia, which doctors typically diagnose based on symptoms, including chronic widespread pain. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 12442 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Jim Giles SOME of the hottest results in the nascent field of social neuroscience, in which emotions and behavioural traits are linked to activity in a particular region of the brain, may be inflated and in some cases entirely spurious. Some experiments correlating brain regions to feelings used a method that inflated the apparent strength of the link So say psychologist Hal Pashler at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues, who examined more than 50 studies that relied on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, many published in high-profile journals, and questioned the authors about their methods. Pashler's team say that in most of the studies, which linked brain regions to feelings including social rejection, neuroticism and jealousy, researchers interpreted their data using a method that inflates the strength of the link between a brain region and the emotion or behaviour. The claim is disputed by at least two of the critiqued groups. Both argue that Pashler has misunderstood their results and that their conclusions are backed by other studies. In many of the studies, researchers scan volunteers' brains as they complete a task designed to elicit a particular emotion. They then divide the images from the scans into cubes called voxels, which can each contain millions of neurons, and attempt to correlate the activity of particular voxels with emotional changes reported by the volunteers. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 12441 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Devin Powell STROKE the belly of a newborn female rat for a few hours a day and chemical "caps" will appear on its DNA that make its brain look more like that of a male. This extraordinary finding suggests that some biological differences between male and female brains may not be decided during fetal development, but instead appear after they are born. According to traditional thinking, sex-specific differences in mammals are determined in the womb by genes on the X and Y chromosomes, with the prenatal hormones the fetus is exposed to also playing a role. Recently, however, it has become clear that the behaviour of a mother rat towards her offspring can cause sex-specific changes. For example, mother rats spend more time licking and grooming their sons, which previous studies suggest is necessary for their genitalia to form properly. To see if a mother's touch might also cause sex-specific changes in rats' brains, Anthony Auger at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and colleagues stroked baby female rats, giving them the attention normally reserved for males. They found that the number of oestrogen receptors in the hypothalamus of stroked females was lower than in unstroked females, and similar to levels found in males. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12440 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rachel Zelkowitz From fashion trends to political movements, nothing is more human than following the crowd. Although history documents our lemminglike tendencies, neuroscience has been slower to explain them. Now, researchers have pinpointed a brain circuit that makes us want to act like our peers. Psychologist Solomon Asch of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania highlighted the power of conformity in a landmark 1951 study. He showed that adults will change their opinions on objective facts--whether one line drawn on a piece of paper is longer than another, for example--to mesh with the group's opinion, even if the group is obviously wrong. Since then, researchers have suggested that conformity helps people gain social acceptance and feel confident that their opinions or perceptions are correct. Other experiments have shown that bucking consensus, in contrast, can cause anxiety and confusion. The findings suggested a role for the brain's reinforcement learning system, says Vasily Klucharev, a social neuroscientist at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Previous studies have shown that the rostral cingulate zone and the nucleus accumbens, areas of the brain believed to be part of that learning system, activate when people make wrong predictions in a betting game and prompt a change in strategy. Klucharev and his colleagues wanted to determine whether the same areas are triggered when an individual's choice doesn't conform to the group's. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 12439 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The vast majority of prisoners who could benefit from drug abuse treatment do not receive it, despite two decades of research that demonstrate its effectiveness, according to researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health. In a report published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, NIDA scientists note that about half of all prisoners (including some sentenced to non-drug-related offenses) are dependent on drugs, yet less than 20 percent of inmates suffering from drug abuse or dependence receive formal treatment. "Treating drug abusing offenders improves public health and safety," said NIDA Director and report co-author Dr. Nora D. Volkow. "In addition to the devastating social consequences for individuals and their families, drug abuse exacts serious health effects, including increased risk for infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C — and treatment for addiction can help prevent their spread. Providing drug abusers with treatment also makes it less likely that these abusers will return to the criminal justice system." The authors of the report suggest that the criminal justice system is in a unique position to encourage drug abusers to enter and remain in treatment, thereby disrupting the vicious cycle of drug use and crime. In fact, most studies indicate that outcomes for those who are legally pressured to enter treatment are as good as or better than outcomes for those who entered treatment without legal pressure, the researchers noted.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12438 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway Women with high levels of oestrogen may adopt a simple relationship strategy more often associated with men: love 'em and leave 'em. New research suggests that young women who produce naturally high levels of an oestrogen compound linked to fertility are more prone to hop from man to man, as well as cheat on their current partner. They also see themselves as more attractive than other women. "These women are willing to trade up when the opportunity arises and continue to extract these lucrative resources from men when they can," says Kristina Durante, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas in Austin, who led the study. She thinks the behaviour could be an adaptation to the high costs of giving birth. "For women it's all about the resources that we need. If you're going to be getting knocked up there's a significant cost," she says. Previous research had shown that women who produce high levels of an oestrogen hormone called oestradiol are perceived as more attractive and mother more children than women with lower amounts of the sex hormone. Oestradiol levels also wax and wane across a woman's ovulatory cycle - generally corresponding to fertility and interest in sex, Durante says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12437 - Posted: 06.24.2010