Increasing numbers of people are using prescription drugs like Ritalin to boost alertness and brain power, say experts. Up to a fifth of adults, including college students and shift workers, may be using cognitive enhancers, a poll of 1,400 by Nature journal suggests. Neuropsychologist Professor Barbara Sahakian of Cambridge University said safety evidence is urgently needed. Experts gather to debate this topic at a meeting in London on Monday evening. Professor Sahakian's own work shows 17% of students in some US universities admit to using the stimulant Ritalin (methylphenidate) - a drug designed to treat hyperactive children - to maximise their learning power. One in five of the 1,400 people who responded to the Nature survey said they had taken Ritalin, Provigil (modafinil) or beta-blockers for non-medical reasons. They used them to stimulate focus, concentration or memory. Of that one in five, 62% had taken Ritalin and 44% Provigil - a drug normally prescribed to alleviating daytime tiredness in people suffering from the rare sleep disorder narcolepsy. Most users had somehow obtained their drugs on prescription or else bought them over the internet. Although these are only snapshots of use, Professor Sahakian says it does suggest these drugs are becoming more popular. Professor Sahakian said given the increasing use of these drugs outside of their intended clinical setting, safety trials were urgently needed. (C)BBC

Keyword: ADHD; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12132 - Posted: 10.14.2008

Scientists are testing whether vitamin D supplements can ease symptoms of Parkinson's disease. A US team found 55% of Parkinson's patients had insufficient levels of vitamin D, compared to 36% of healthy elderly people. However, the Emory University researchers do not yet know if the vitamin deficiency is a cause or the result of having Parkinson's. The study appears in the journal Archives of Neurology. Parkinson's disease affects nerve cells in several parts of the brain, particularly those that use the chemical messenger dopamine to control movement. The most common symptoms are tremor, stiffness and slowness of movement. These can be treated with oral replacement of dopamine. Previous studies have shown that the part of the brain affected most by Parkinson's, the substantia nigra, has high levels of the vitamin D receptor, which suggests vitamin D may be important for normal functions of these cells. Vitamin D is found in the diet, but is primarily formed in the skin by exposure to sunlight. However, the body's ability to produce the vitamin decreases with age, making older people more prone to deficiency. One theory is that people with Parkinson's may be particularly vulnerable because their condition limits the amount of time they spend out of doors. However, scientists say it may also be possible that low vitamin D levels are in some way related to the genesis and origin of the disease. (C)BBC

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 12131 - Posted: 10.14.2008

By GINA KOLATA This is a story about M.R.I.’s, those amazing scans that can show tissue injury and bone damage, inflammation and fluid accumulation. Except when they can’t and you think they can. I found out about magnetic resonance imaging tests when I injured my forefoot running. All of a sudden, halfway through a run, my foot hurt so much that I had to stop. But an M.R.I. at a local radiology center found nothing wrong. That, of course, was what I wanted to hear. So I spent five days waiting for it to feel better, taking the anti-inflammatory drugs ibuprofen and naproxen, using an elliptical cross-trainer, and riding my road bike with its clipless pedals that attach themselves to my bicycling shoes. By then, my foot hurt so much I had to walk on my heel. I was beginning to doubt that scan: it was hard to believe nothing was wrong. So I went to the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York for a second opinion from Dr. John G. Kennedy, an orthopedist who specializes in sports-related lower-limb injuries. And there I had another M.R.I. It showed a serious stress fracture, a hairline crack in a metatarsal bone in my forefoot. It was so serious, in fact, that Dr. Kennedy warned that I risked surgery if I continued activities like cycling and the elliptical cross-trainer, which make such injuries worse. And I had to stop taking anti-inflammatory drugs, since they impede bone healing. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 12130 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Melinda Wenner The leading cause of infant death in developed countries, sudden infant death syndrome, is still largely a medical mystery. Past studies have revealed that in the brain stems of more than half of infants who die from SIDS, the neurons that produce serotonin—a chemical responsible for regulating heart rate, body temperature and mood—are overly prevalent and abnormally shaped. Until now, no one has known how these problems might cause death, but a July 4 Science study reveals clues about what might be going wrong in SIDS and how doctors might prevent it. Mood researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Monterotondo, Italy, were investigating how serotonin levels affected anxiety-related behavior in mice when they got a surprise. They bred the mice to have too many 5-HT1A receptors, which are known to signal neurons to slow down the release of serotonin when the chemical is abundant in the brain. Having more receptors ultimately lowers serotonin levels and overall serotonin activity. The team was startled to find that nearly three quarters of the mice died before they turned four months old, typically after suffering sudden drops in heart rate and body temperature so drastic that the complications killed the animals. Although the researchers do not yet know what prompts these crises, co-author Cornelius Gross speculates that they occur when serotonin activity cannot ramp up properly. For instance, serotonin systems are turned off during rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, so waking is typically accompanied by a rapid increase in serotonin activity. In the mice, Gross explains, the compromised 5-HT1A feedback loop may prevent serotonin neurons from firing when they should, disrupting nervous system function. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 12129 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Eric Bland -- Vocal cords were overrated anyway. A new Army grant aims to create email or voice mail and send it by thought alone. No need to type an email, dial a phone or even speak a word. Known as synthetic telepathy, the technology is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an electroencephalograph, or EEG. Similar technology is being marketed as a way to control video games by thought. "I think that this will eventually become just another way of communicating," said Mike D'Zmura, from the University of California, Irvine and the lead scientist on the project. "It will take a lot of research, and a lot of time, but there are also a lot of commercial applications, not just military applications," he said. The idea of communicating by thought alone is not a new one. In the 1960s, a researcher strapped an EEG to his head and, with some training, could stop and start his brain's alpha waves to compose Morse code messages. The Army grant to researchers at University of California, Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland has two objectives. The first is to compose a message using, as D'Zmura puts it, "that little voice in your head." © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12128 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Daniel Cressey Assessing the ratio of males to females in endangered populations is vital for conservation work. But sexing a dolphin is tricky — not least because the crucial parts of the mammal are usually concealed beneath the waves. Researchers generally have to rely on time-consuming observations, either inferring a female's sex from its close association with a calf, or noting genitalia when animals leap from the water or are captured on underwater video. The alternative is a biopsy that is potentially unpleasant for the animal. Lucy Rowe and Stephen Dawson, marine biologists at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, have now come up with a accurate alternative that could spare their fellow researchers, and the dolphins, this inconvenience. In a recently published paper in Marine Mammal Science the pair report successfully using fin photographs to determine the sex of bottlenose dolphins in a well-studied population in New Zealand's Doubtful Sound1. "Our technique allows bottlenose dolphins to be sexed from [characteristics] measured solely from dorsal fin identification photographs, which are routinely collected as part of non-invasive population monitoring," Rowe and Dawson told Nature News in an email. Rowe and Dawson found that male fins had significantly more scars than female fins, probably as a result of fighting. Male fins had a median of 15% scar tissue, whereas in females this was just 3.9%. Conversely, female fins tended to have a greater number of patchy skin lesions than male fins, with a median of 12.1% coverage compared with males' 6.8%. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 12127 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jeanna Bryner We know our siblings and in-laws have personalities — sometimes to a fault. But science recently has revealed that such individual differences are widespread in the animal kingdom, even reaching to spiders, birds, mice, squid, rats and pigs. Now a new mathematical model helps to explain how and why such animal temperaments develop over time. The model explains a central question of both animal and human personality — why certain individuals are more rigid or flexible than others, and why some change their behavior in response to changes in their environment while others do not. The answer, says Franz Weissing of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, comes down to costs and benefits. A group in which both rigid and flexible personality types co-exist makes for an optimal system, his model shows. The field of animal-personality study is starting to gain some substance and credibility, said University of Texas psychologist Sam Gosling, who does research in this field. "When I started doing this, like 10 years ago, things were really different. I remember people thought it was anthropomorphic [to use the term animal personality]," said Gosling, who was not involved in the recent study.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12126 - Posted: 06.24.2010

HealthDay News) -- Brain oxygen levels and blood pressure may play a role in the complex relationship between sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and cognitive problems in children, a U.S. study finds. About two-thirds of children with SDB (snoring or obstructive sleep apnea) have some degree of cognitive deficit, but it's been difficult to match the severity of cognitive deficit to the severity of the SDB. This suggests that other factors may be involved or that the correct factors weren't being measured, according to background information in an American Thoracic Society news release about the study. "A history of snoring is a predictor for cognitive deficit in children with SDB," study principal investigator Dr. Raouf Amin, a professor of pediatrics and director of the division of pulmonary medicine at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, said in the news release. ad_icon "However, the frequency of apnea events during sleep does not predict cognitive deficit and does not correlate with the degree of cognitive deficit. Such a paradox raised the question of whether there are some variables that we do not traditionally measure in the sleep laboratory that might modify the effect of SDB on cognition," Amin said. For this study, which included children aged 7 to 13, the researchers used infrared spectroscopy to determine whether a new factor -- the degree to which the brain's blood remains oxygenated during sleep -- could explain variability in cognitive dysfunction better than SDB severity. The children's blood pressure was also measured.

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12125 - Posted: 10.13.2008

By STEPHEN CASTLE BRUSSELS — Noise from personal music players is a routine annoyance for travelers on buses, trains and planes. But it also threatens permanent hearing loss for as many as 10 million Europeans who use them, according to a scientific study for the European Union that will be published Monday. The report said that those who listened for five hours a week at high-volume settings exposed themselves to more noise than permitted in the noisiest factory or work place. Maximum volume on some devices can generate as much noise as an airplane taking off nearby. The study — from a team of nine specialists on the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks — also warns that young people do not realize the damage until years later. “Regularly listening to personal music players at high-volume settings when young,” the report said, “often has no immediate effect on hearing but is likely to result in hearing loss later in life.” The report is the latest of several to warn that the “MP3” generation of youths may be heading for hearing impairment in later life.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 12124 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By John Tierney In 2002, the Bush administration’s National Drug Control Strategy set a goal of reducing illegal drug use by 25 percent in five years. This was followed by an unprecedented campaign of persuasion (more than 100 different anti-drug advertisements and commercials) and law enforcement as the number of annual arrests for marijuana possession climbed above 700,000 — higher than ever before, and greater than the combined total for all violent crimes. Now that the first five years’ results are available, the campaign can officially be called a failure, according to an analysis of federal drug-use surveys by Jon Gettman, a senior fellow at the George Mason University School of Public Policy. The prevalence of marijuana use (as measured by the portion of the population that reported using it in the previous month) declined by 6 percent, far short of the 25-percent goal, and that decline was partially offset by a slight increase in the use of other illicit drugs. As a result, the overall decline in drug use was less than 4 percent. Dr. Gettman’s report was sponsored by the Marijuana Policy Project Foundation, a group opposed to current drug laws, but it draws on the same five years of federal drug-survey data used by John P. Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. When the data became available this year, the White House’s press release hailed the numbers as evidence of “tremendous progress” after five years, but the press release failed to mention the original goal of a 25-percent reduction in overall drug use. Instead, the White House highlighted reductions for specific drugs (like cocaine) and among specific groups (like teenagers). Such selective press releases, Dr. Gettman told me, have been the norm for two decades because there’s been so little overall progress in the federal war on drugs.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12123 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Victoria Stern Spinal cord injuries and disorders afflict millions worldwide, from disabled veterans to people with neurodegenerative disorders such as Lou Gehrig’s disease, yet there is currently no way to repair a damaged spine. Geneticists at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle are hoping to change that by developing the first genetic encyclopedia of the spinal cord. The Allen Spinal Cord Atlas, which will be available online for free in early 2009, will map out which genes are active in which locations along the spine in mice, which share 90 percent of their genetic material with humans. Researchers are looking forward to using the new tool, based on the success of the Allen Institute’s 2006 Brain Atlas. That genetic map led to key insights, such as the link between glioblastoma, the deadliest type of brain tumor, and a gene called BEX1. Gregory Foltz of Swedish Medical Center in Seattle saw that BEX1 was turned off in the brains of his tumor patients, and using the Brain Atlas, he confirmed that the gene is usually active in healthy brains, as reported in Cancer Research in 2006. Foltz realized that when BEX1 is inhibited, cells grow uncontrollably and can form tumors—and researchers hope to develop treatments that target the malfunctioning gene. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12122 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas -- It may not be such a dog-eat-dog world after all, at least among puppies. A new study has found that young male dogs playing with female pups will often let the females win, even if the males have a physical advantage. Male dogs sometimes place themselves in potentially disadvantageous positions that could make them more vulnerable to attack, and researchers suspect the opportunity to play may be more important to them than winning. Such self-handicapping has been documented before in red-necked wallabies, squirrel monkeys, hamadryas baboons and even humans, all of which frequently take on defensive positions when playing with youngsters, in particular. The gentlemanly dog behavior is even accompanied with a bow. "We found that self-handicapping tends to occur in conjunction with play bows," lead author Camille Ward told Discovery News. "A play bow is a signal that dogs use when they want to communicate playful intentions to a potential play partner," added Ward, a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan and director of About Dogs LLC. She is also author of the forthcoming book, Relationship-Based Dog Training. Copyright © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12121 - Posted: 06.24.2010

What's the worst that could happen after eating a slice of pepperoni pizza? A little heartburn, for most people. But for up to a million women in the U.S., enjoying that piece of pizza has painful consequences. They have a chronic bladder condition that causes pelvic pain. Spicy food -- as well as citrus, caffeine, tomatoes and alcohol-- can cause a flare in their symptoms and intensify the pain. It was thought that the spike in their symptoms was triggered when digesting the foods produced chemicals in the urine that irritated the bladder. However, researchers from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine believe the symptoms -- pain and an urgent need to frequently urinate -- are actually being provoked by a surprise perpetrator. Applying their recent animal study to humans, the scientists believe the colon, irritated by the spicy food, is to blame. Their idea opens up new treatment possibilities for "painful bladder syndrome," or interstitial cystitis, a condition that primarily affects women (only 10 percent of sufferers are men.) During a flare up, the pelvic pain is so intense some women administer anesthetic lidocaine directly into their bladders via a catheter to get relief. Patients typically also feel an urgent need to urinate up to 50 times a day and are afraid to leave their homes in case they can't find a bathroom. "This disease has a devastating effect on people's lives," said David Klumpp, principal investigator and assistant professor of urology at the Feinberg School. "It affects people's relationships with family and friends." Klumpp said some women who suffer from this become so depressed, they attempt suicide. Klumpp worked with Charles Rudick, a postdoctoral fellow at the Feinberg School, on the paper, which was published in the September issue of Nature Clinical Practice Urology.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 12120 - Posted: 10.13.2008

Drop an egg in a frying pan and who doesn’t think “Your brain on drugs”? But in the 21 years since that image became an icon, science has tried to learn what really changes in an addicted brain. Animal studies have shown that tiny branches coming off of brain cells, called dendritic spines, are more abundant in addiction. These spines serve to create connections for increased communication across the gaps or synapses between brain cells. For years researchers believed that they were causing addictive behaviors. Now new research challenges that notion. “They may actually be a brain mechanism to compensate, to try to limit, the individual’s sensitivity to the sort of maladaptive changes that lead to very long-lasting aspects of addiction,” says Christopher Cowan, an addiction researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. For the last few years, Cowan has been studying the role of a certain family of proteins, collectively called MEF2, that are responsible for regulating the growth of dendritic spines as the brain develops over time. But Cowan also suspected that these proteins could perhaps be responsible for the growth of spines in addicted brains. Says Cowan, “I wanted to ask whether, in an adult organism, an adult animal, particularly and ultimately in humans, whether these… changes in synaptic connections that are controlled by MEF2, whether these could be involved in the process of drug addiction.”

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12119 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The human intestine detects potential poisons passing into it - and may take action to reduce the harm they cause. US researchers have found a link between receptors in the gut which detect bitter foods and higher levels of a digestion-slowing hormone. The same hormone also reduces appetite - perhaps to stop us eating any more. The scientists, writing in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, say it means that sweeter-tasting medicines could be more effective. Humans, and other animals, have evolved to dislike bitter tastes, probably because many natural plant poisons carry these flavours. The researchers from the University of California at Irvine, led by Dr Timothy Osborne, are suggesting that when we do manage to eat something bitter, another defence mechanism may kick in. It has been established for some time that the same taste receptors which are found on the tongue, and help us differentiate between sweet and bitter flavours, are found in the gut. While the tongue-based receptors send a message to the brain, those in the gut are thought to trigger other chemical signals involved in digestion, although these have yet to be fully understood. The US team found that when the bitter taste receptors in the gut are activated, this leads to the production of a hormone called cholecystokinin. This is already known to not only slow up "motility", the rate at which food passes through the digestive system from the stomach, but also suppress appetite. (C)BBC

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Neurotoxins
Link ID: 12118 - Posted: 10.10.2008

Colin Barras More than a decade after the first reported cases of debilitating brain disease variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the exact mode of infection remains controversial. Weird self-replicating proteins called prions are the prime suspect, but are yet to be found conclusively guilty. In an effort to solve the mystery biochemists have created the first complete synthetic prion and plan to discover if it can be as toxic as the real thing. The prion is the alter-ego of a protein that naturally exists in cells. But that harmless protein can undergo a Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation into a shape that clumps together into disease-causing plaques. Even worse, those prions convert any normal versions of the protein it meets into the malignant form. In 2005, Bruce Chesebro's team at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, discovered that prions need a string of molecules that acts as an "anchor" to be toxic. Prions that usually cause the disease scrapie in sheep and goats proved unable to perform their usual toxic tricks in mice when stripped of their anchors (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1110837). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 12117 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY Maybe you haven’t heard anything about the shingles vaccine. Or maybe you have, but decided against getting it for any of a number of reasons like these: It is approved for people 60 and older, and you are 45. Your insurance does not cover it, and it costs $165 to $300. Before dismissing the vaccine entirely, you may want to consider Merritt Clapp-Smith’s recent encounter with shingles. Although at 39 she is much younger than the typical shingles patient, her experience with confusing symptoms and a twice-missed diagnosis occurs at all ages. This is her story: “My shingles case began with the periodic sensation that bugs were crawling in my hair. Three weeks later, I developed a headache that was one-sided but unlike a migraine. The pain was so bad I couldn’t go to work. That evening, I discovered a raised and very tender ridge on my scalp. “Unable to sleep and in terrible pain, I went to the local emergency room. The doctor there gave me an intravenous painkiller, tested me for meningitis or encephalitis, and concluded that I had a migraine and infected hair follicle. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 12116 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Robert Burton is the former chief of neurology at the University of California at San Francisco-Mt. Zion hospital. He recently wrote a book, On Being Certain, that explored the neuroscience behind the feeling of certainty, or why we are so convinced we’re right even when we’re wrong. He and Jonah Lehrer, the editor of Mind Matters, discussed the science of certainty. LEHRER: What first got you interested in studying the mental state of certainty? BURTON: A personal confession: I have always been puzzled by those who seem utterly confident in their knowledge. Perhaps this is a constitutional defect on my part, but I seldom have the sense of knowing unequivocally that I am right. Consequently I have looked upon those who ooze self-confidence and certainty with a combination of envy and suspicion. At a professional level, I have long wondered why so many physicians will recommend unproven, even risky therapies simply because they "know" that these treatments work. It is easy to be cynical and suspect the worst of motives, from greed to ignorance, but I have known many first-rate, highly concerned and seemingly well motivated physicians who, nevertheless, operate based upon gut feelings and personal beliefs even in the face of contrary scientific evidence. After years of rumination, it gradually dawned on me that there may be an underlying biological component to such behavior. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12115 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Four months after his December 2006 hand transplant, David Savage’s partial sense of touch in the new right hand activated the same brain area that would have controlled his original right hand 35 years earlier. The photo at left was taken shortly after the transplant, while the photo at right was taken one year after the procedure.Jewish Hospital, Kleinert Kutz, and University of Louisville David Savage probably never expected to look down and see someone else’s hand attached to his right arm. Neither did he anticipate using the strange appendage to illuminate how the brain works. But that’s precisely what the 56-year-old hand-transplant patient has done. Four months after his December 2006 transplant, Savage’s partial sense of touch in the new hand activated the same brain area that would have controlled his original right hand 35 years earlier, say neuroscientist Scott Frey of the University of Oregon in Eugene and colleagues. At the age of 19, a machine-press accident led to the amputation of Savage’s right hand. When Savage had both hands, part of his right brain responded to his left hand, and a corresponding part of his left brain responded to his right hand. After the amputation, that same part of his left brain would have been sensory-deprived and thus ready to adopt duties of adjacent sensory areas, such as those for the right arm and possibly his face. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 12114 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Making cells glow with a protein borrowed from jellyfish is one of the brightest ideas in chemistry. At least that is what the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences implied when it announced October 8 that the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry would be awarded to three scientists who were instrumental in discovering green fluorescent protein, commonly called GFP, and developing the protein as a powerful tool for basic biological research. Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien will equally share the $1.4 million prize. GFP can absorb light at one energy and emit light at another. The result is that the protein glows, and glows with a specific color, when exposed to a specific wavelength of light. This function differs from that of bioluminescent proteins, which can generate their own light. "There's no doubt that GFP has changed the way we do biology," says Jeff Lichtman, a neuroscientist at Harvard University. "There's a wide range of things that can be done with GFP that are just unthinkable without it." For instance, scientists can watch the movement of proteins within a cell or track the migration of cells throughout the body. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12113 - Posted: 06.24.2010