By Tina Hesman Saey As open-and-shut cases go, Alzheimer’s disease should top the list. The victim is clear. Suspects are in custody. Wherever neurons die due to Alzheimer’s disease, a protein known as amyloid-beta is always found at the scene of the crime, hanging around in large, tough gangs called plaques. Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (which goes by its initials ALS or the alias Lou Gehrig’s disease); and prion diseases, such as scrapie in sheep, mad cow disease in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, all have similar stories. Scientific investigators have pieced together this much: A seemingly mild-mannered brain protein falls in with a bad crowd, the corrupted protein and its cronies gang up and mob violence results in the death of a brain cell. It’s a scene repeated over and over again in different neighborhoods of the brain, by different proteins, but all with the same result — the death of neurons and rise of disease. But no one has convicted these suspected neuron killers. So far, cases mostly rely on circumstantial evidence, with large holes in the web of proof. There’s no smoking gun, no motive and no eyewitness to corroborate what scientists suspect. And there’s no cure for the diseases that slowly break down brains and spinal cords, robbing victims of memories or mobility. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Alzheimers; Huntingtons
Link ID: 11912 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jo Carlowe In 477BC the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos devised a memory technique called the “method of loci”. This entails memorising items along an imagined journey and then mentally retracing one's steps to recall each article. More than 2,000 years later, the same mnemonic system will be brought into play at the UK Open Memory Championships next weekend in London. Over two days, competitors from across the country will face gruelling mental challenges, from memorising a sequence of 200 random words in five minutes, to remembering the sequence of playing cards in as many decks as possible. The winner will compete at the World Memory Championships in Bahrain in October. The open nature of the UK competition is something of a misnomer. As Phil Chambers, “chief arbiter” of the championship, explains, anyone untrained in the art of “mind sports” can expect humiliation. To put it into perspective: on average most of us can recall between five and nine numbers in a row. The eight-times world memory champion Dominic O'Brien, 50, can remember the order of 54 randomly shuffled decks of playing cards - an astounding 2,808 cards. He has turned his memory into a full-time career, running memory workshops and writing numerous books. Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 11911 - Posted: 06.24.2010

For many people, our only experience with Parkinson’s disease is that of watching actor Michael J. Fox struggle publicly with the illness as he has campaigned for more research and funding. But as my colleague Karen Barrow notes in the latest “Patient Voices” feature, there are many less-famous faces of Parkinson’s. Parkinson’s disease is a neurologic disorder that occurs as a result of the death of nerve cells in the brain that produce dopamine. The loss of dopamine production in the brain can lead to tremors, balance problems, stiff facial expressions and muffled speech, among other things. In the United States, an estimated 1 million people have the disease, and another 60,000 are diagnosed each year. Although the condition usually develops after the age of 60, 15 percent of those diagnosed are under 50. One of those is runner Alyssa Johnson, 43, who was training for the Boston Marathon in 2003 when she started dragging her leg and developed a shin cramp. After searching for answers, she was finally diagnosed with Parkinson’s. “It’s not something you’d expect with someone my age,'’ she said. “I used to run with my husband all the time. We don’t run together anymore because it’s still too hard for me emotionally. He’s still competitive, and I’m still trying to get from point A to point B.'’ Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 11910 - Posted: 06.24.2010

US scientists have discovered people who can "hear" what they see. The rare form of synaesthesia - a condition where senses intermingle - came to light after a student reported "hearing sounds" from a screensaver. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology then found three more people with the same condition, New Scientist magazine reported. Those affected performed better in tests of recognising visual patterns than those without the condition. A more common form of the condition is being able to perceive numbers or letters as colours. Several artists have been linked with the condition, including David Hockney who is able to see colour when listening to music. Dr Melissa Saenz discovered the phenomenon when a group of students were being shown around her lab and one asked if anyone else could hear a pattern of moving dots on a computer screen. When she questioned him further she realised he matched the criteria for synaesthesia - he had experienced it all his life and it happened with lots of different moving images. By sending the moving dots image to hundreds of other volunteers, she found three others who could also hear sounds, such as tapping, whirring or whooshing, when watching it. (C)BBC

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 11909 - Posted: 08.07.2008

By Melissa Dahl When Bill Russell tells people that his severe depression was relieved by shock therapy, the most common response he gets is: "They're still doing that?" Most people might be quicker to associate electroshock therapy with torture rather than healing. But since the 1980s, the practice has been quietly making a comeback. The number of patients undergoing electroconvulsive therapy, as it's formally called, has tripled to 100,000 a year, according to the National Mental Health Association. During an ECT treatment, doctors jolt the unconscious patient's brain with an electrical charge, which triggers a grand mal seizure. It's considered by many psychiatrists to be the most effective way to treat depression especially in patients who haven't responded to antidepressants. One 2006 study at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina found that ECT improved the quality of life for nearly 80 percent of patients. Story continues below ↓advertisement "It's the definitive treatment for depression," says Dr. Kenneth Melman, a psychiatrist at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle who practices ECT. "There aren't any other treatments for depression that have been found to be superior to ECT." In fact, antidepressants — the most widely used method for treating depression — don't work at all for 30 percent of patients. © 2008 Microsoft

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 11908 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It may take just one tobacco cigarette for some people to get addicted to nicotine because of how their brains are wired, a Canadian study suggests. By manipulating receptors in the brains of rats, the researchers were able to control whether the first exposure to nicotine was enjoyable or repulsive. The study appears in the Aug. 6 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. "During the early phase of tobacco exposure, many individuals find nicotine highly unpleasant and aversive, whereas others may become rapidly dependent on nicotine and find it highly rewarding," said Steven Laviolette, a professor of anatomy and cell biology at the University of Western Ontario. "We wanted to explore that difference," he added in a release. The team experimented on two types of receptors for dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain's reward circuitry. By blocking the receptors, the researchers were able to switch how nicotine was processed — from repulsive to rewarding or positive. The natural variations that occur between people may explain why some are more likely to become addicted to nicotine. © CBC 2008

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 11907 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Robert Stickgold and Jeffrey M. Ellenbogen In 1865 Friedrich August Kekulé woke up from a strange dream: he imagined a snake forming a circle and biting its own tail. Like many organic chemists of the time, Kekulé had been working feverishly to describe the true chemical structure of benzene, a problem that continually eluded understanding. But Kekulé’s dream of a snake swallowing its tail, so the story goes, helped him to accurately realize that benzene’s structure formed a ring. This insight paved the way for a new understanding of organic chemistry and earned Kekulé a title of nobility in Germany. Although most of us have not been ennobled, there is something undeniably familiar about Kekulé’s problem-solving method. Whether deciding to go to a particular college, accept a challenging job offer or propose to a future spouse, “sleeping on it” seems to provide the clarity we need to piece together life’s puzzles. But how does slumber present us with answers? The latest research suggests that while we are peacefully asleep our brain is busily processing the day’s information. It combs through recently formed memories, stabilizing, copying and filing them, so that they will be more useful the next day. A night of sleep can make memories resistant to interference from other information and allow us to recall them for use more effectively the next morning. And sleep not only strengthens memories, it also lets the brain sift through newly formed memories, possibly even identifying what is worth keeping and selectively maintaining or enhancing these aspects of a memory. When a picture contains both emotional and unemotional elements, sleep can save the important emotional parts and let the less relevant background drift away. It can analyze collections of memories to discover relations among them or identify the gist of a memory while the unnecessary details fade—perhaps even helping us find the meaning in what we have learned. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 11906 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Susan Milius That fish over there chasing the small female — he probably doesn’t really like her. He’s just acting that way because another guy’s watching. This scenario plays out among the small silvery-gray fish called Atlantic mollies (Poecilia mexicana), says Martin Plath of the University of Potsdam in Germany and the University of Oklahoma in Norman. A male molly tends to switch his mating preferences to the opposite of his usual ones when a rival male molly shows up, Plath and his colleagues report in the Aug. 5 Current Biology. When a male molly pursues a female, other males tend to chase her, too, Plath says. Thus he and his colleagues propose that switching preferences in front of a rival could deflect the competition’s interest to a less desirable female. The finding adds to a growing body of evidence that social environment affects mating preferences, Plath says, adding another layer of complexity to the study of sexual choices and evolution. Or it could be that mollies offer a rare example of documented deception among fish, Plath says. “You expect it among ravens,” he says, since the cognitively advanced birds trick observers while hiding food. “The funny thing here is that it’s a small gray fish.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11905 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Kurt Kleiner Mimicking the curves of a human retina has enabled a digital image sensor to take wide-angle pictures without distortion. This is possible thanks to an improved method of transferring silicon sensors onto a curved surface. The electronic eyeball design can allow small cameras to capture wide-angle views with low distortion. That could be useful in a range of situations, from policing, to attaching cameras to wildlife. Conventional film and digital cameras use a flat surface to capture an image and as a result are unable to capture a wide field of view without distortion. Optics designed to correct such distortions can be complex and expensive. The concave retina of your eye is able to capture a wider field of view without distortion. But building similarly curved electronic image sensors is difficult. Silicon doesn't bend easily and can't be forced into a hemispherical form without creases appearing in the material. John Rogers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne and colleagues have now worked out a way around those problems, using conventional chip manufacturing technology. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 11904 - Posted: 06.24.2010

LONDON - Eating tuna and other fatty fish may help prevent memory loss in addition to reducing the risk of stroke, Finnish researchers said on Monday. People who ate baked or broiled — but not fried — fish high in omega-3 fatty acids have been found to be less likely to have “silent” brain lesions that can cause memory loss and dementia and are linked to a higher risk of stroke, said Jyrki Virtanen of the University of Kuopio in Finland. “Previous findings have shown that fish and fish oil can help prevent stroke, but this is one of the only studies that looks at fish’s effect on silent brain (lesions) in healthy, older people,,” Virtanen, who led the study, said in a statement. Omega-3 fatty acids are also found in salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines, and in other foods such as walnuts. They have been shown to provide an anti-inflammatory effect and have been linked to a lower risk of heart disease. The Finnish team studied 3,660 people aged 65 and older who underwent brains scans five years apart to detect the silent brain lesions, or infarcts, found in about 20 percent of otherwise healthy elderly people The researchers found that men and women who ate omega-3-rich fish three times or more per week had a nearly 26 percent lower risk of having silent brain lesions. Copyright 2008 Reuters.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 11903 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A hormone patch may protect women with schizophrenia or other severe mental illnesses from psychotic feelings. Australian scientists found that women given the sex hormone oestrogen were less likely to report suffering hallucinations or delusions. Writing in the Archives of General Psychiatry Journal, they said the hormone might be enhancing blood flow to the brain. A UK mental health charity said funding was now needed for bigger studies. While men do have some oestrogen in their bodies, it is produced in much greater concentrations in the female body, where, among other functions, it helps regulate the menstrual cycle. The link between oestrogen and mental illness was first recognised more than a century ago, but only recently has it been considered as a possible treatment. The researchers from Monash University in Melbourne recruited more than 100 women with diagnosed schizophrenia, half of whom were given a patch containing estradiol - the most common form of oestrogen. The other half also wore a patch, but with no active drugs, and both groups carried on taking their normal medication. Over the next month, their symptoms and feelings were recorded on a weekly basis. The group given estradiol had a greater improvement in psychotic symptoms over that period, and were less likely to report other negative changes in their condition. (C)BBC

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 11902 - Posted: 08.05.2008

By John Pearson and Michael Platt The insight that neurological functions could be localized in the brain—that activities such as speech, vision and hearing take place in fixed locations, with the aid of specialized neural circuits—has served as one of the driving ideas in neuroscience. Less often appreciated is the companion notion that the power of the brain, the key to its flexibility and coordination, lies not just in the capacities of these dedicated processing centers, but also in the connections among them. It is not enough, as the phrenologists proposed centuries ago, to have islands of specialized function for each of the brain’s activities. For modern neuroscientists, the whole story must lie not just in the brain’s compartmentalization, but in its communication. Nevertheless, modern neuroscience techniques often focus on localization at the expense of communication. Whole-brain imaging techniques such as functional MRI, for example, have allowed researchers to gain some insight into which regions of the brain are more active during a given behavior. But the most direct technique available for studying brain function during behavior—measuring the electrical activity of individual neurons—typically focuses on a specific location within the brain. This is not only because the technical challenges posed by simultaneous recordings in several brain areas are daunting, but also because many regions remain poorly understood, and others frequently share so many connections with the rest of the brain that they often appear to be involved in everything. Most of the time, the neural circuits involved are sufficiently complex that neuroscientists are simply trying to get a handle on what role, if any, a particular brain area plays in behavior; try to factor in communication among several of them, and most hypotheses become too complicated to test directly. In effect, studying information flow within the brain becomes a bit like tapping into a massive network switchbox: there’s a constant stream of information flowing past, but without a clever experiment, it’s nearly impossible to tell just where that information is going or how it’s being used. Unfortunately, these are the very questions neuroscientists suspect are most crucial for understanding one of the most complex of human behaviors: how we make decisions. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 11901 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY Even the most fabulous, high-flying lives hit pockets of dead air, periods when the sails go slack. Movie stars get marooned in D.M.V. lines. Prime ministers sit with frozen smiles through interminable state events. Living-large rappers endure empty August afternoons, pacing the mansion, checking the refrigerator, staring idly out the window, baseball droning on the radio. Scientists know plenty about boredom, too, though more as a result of poring through thickets of meaningless data than from studying the mental state itself. Much of the research on the topic has focused on the bad company it tends to keep, from depression and overeating to smoking and drug use. Yet boredom is more than a mere flagging of interest or a precursor to mischief. Some experts say that people tune things out for good reasons, and that over time boredom becomes a tool for sorting information — an increasingly sensitive spam filter. In various fields including neuroscience and education, research suggests that falling into a numbed trance allows the brain to recast the outside world in ways that can be productive and creative at least as often as they are disruptive. In a recent paper in The Cambridge Journal of Education, Teresa Belton and Esther Priyadharshini of East Anglia University in England reviewed decades of research and theory on boredom, and concluded that it’s time that boredom “be recognized as a legitimate human emotion that can be central to learning and creativity.” Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 11900 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER Here is a fun and easy experiment that Rachel Herz of Brown University suggests you try at home, but only if you promise to eat your vegetables first, floss afterward, and are not at risk of a diabetic coma. Buy a bag of assorted jelly beans of sufficiently high quality to qualify, however oxymoronically, as “gourmet.” Then, sample all the flavors in the bag systematically until you are sure you appreciate just how distinctive each one is, because expertise is important and you may never get another excuse this good. Now for the meat of our matter: pinch your nostrils shut and do the sampling routine again. Notice the differences? That’s right — now there are none. Every bean still tastes sweet, but absent a sense of smell you might as well be eating sugared pencil erasers. And if in midchew you unbind your nose, what then? At once the candy’s candid charms return, and you can tell your orange sherbet from a buttered popcorn. We’ve all heard about the mysterious powers of smell and its importance in love, friendship and food. Yet a simple game like What’s My Bean, and our consistent surprise at the impact of shutting down our smell circuits, shows that we don’t really grasp just how deep the nose goes. At the International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste held in San Francisco late last month, Dr. Herz and other researchers discussed the many ways our sense of smell stands alone. Olfaction is an ancient sense, the key by which our earliest forebears learned to approach or slink off. Yet the right aroma can evoke such vivid, whole body sensations that we feel life’s permanent newness, the grounding of now. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Emotions
Link ID: 11899 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Greg Miller Early Saturday morning, a Molotov-cocktail-like device set fire to the home of a developmental neurobiologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). His family escaped by climbing down a fire escape from a second-story window. Around the same time, a similar device destroyed the car of another UCSC researcher. As ScienceNOW went to press, no one had claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the university and police suspect they are the work of animal-rights extremists. In recent years, universities and law enforcement officials in the United States have had to grapple with increasingly personal threats, harassment, and attacks on animal researchers and their families (Science, 21 December 2007, p. 1856). California has been an epicenter of such animal-rights extremism: Several biomedical researchers at UC Los Angeles have been targeted in recent years, and more recently, scientists at other University of California (UC) campuses have endured harassment and had their homes vandalized. Twenty-four UC Berkeley researchers and seven staff members have been harassed in recent months, according to a university spokesperson. In February, six masked intruders tried to force their way into the home of a UCSC researcher during a birthday party for her young daughter. Concerns were sparked again last week in Santa Cruz by pamphlets discovered in a downtown coffee shop and turned in to police. Titled "Murderers and Torturers Alive and Well in Santa Cruz," they contained the photographs, home addresses, and phone numbers of 13 UCSC faculty members, along with "threat-laden language" condemning animal research, says Captain Steve Clark of the Santa Cruz police. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 11898 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Daniel Cressey Whales subjected to military sonar will neither dive nor feed, according to an unpublished 2007 report from the UK military, obtained by Nature after a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The impact of sonar on whales has become an increasingly fraught issue in recent years, with submarine exercises being linked to several high-profile mass strandings. The US Navy has admitted concerns over sonar’s effects on marine mammals, although actual evidence for harm has been in short supply. submarineSubmarines' sonar has been implicated in whale strandings.Punchstock But military-sponsored tests now suggest that low levels of sonar, which do not cause direct damage to whales, could still cause harm by triggering behavioural changes. The UK military report details observations of whale activity during Operation Anglo-Saxon 06, a submarine war-games exercise in 2006. Produced for the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, it states the results are “potentially very significant”. The study used an array of hydrophones to listen for whale sounds during the war games. Across the course of the exercise, the number of whale recordings dropped from over 200 to less than 50. “Beaked whale species ... appear to cease vocalising and foraging for food in the area around active sonar transmissions,” concludes the report. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Hearing; Animal Migration
Link ID: 11897 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Drake Bennett In September of 1856, in the face of a growing rebellion, Napoleon III dispatched Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin to Algeria. Robert-Houdin was not a general, nor a diplomat. He was a magician - the father, by most accounts, of modern magic. (A promising young escape artist named Ehrich Weiss would, a few decades later, choose his stage name by adding an "i" to "Houdin.") His mission was to counter the Algerian marabouts, conjurers whose artful wizardry had helped convince the Algerian populace of Allah's displeasure with French rule. A French colonial official assembled an audience of Arab chieftains, and Robert-Houdin put on a show that, in its broadest outlines, would be familiar to today's audiences: he pulled cannonballs out of his hat, he plucked lit candelabra out of the air, he poured gallon upon gallon of coffee out of an empty silver bowl. Then, as he recounted in his memoirs, Robert-Houdin launched into a piece of enchantment calculated to cow the chieftains. He had a small wooden chest with a metal handle brought onto the stage. He picked a well-muscled member of the audience and asked him to lift the box; the man did it easily. Then Robert-Houdin announced, with a menacing wave of his hand, that he had sapped the man's strength. When the volunteer again took hold of the box, it would not budge - an assistant to Robert-Houdin had activated a powerful magnet in the floor of the stage. The volunteer heaved at the box, his frustration shading into desperation until Robert-Houdin's assistant, at a second signal, sent an electric shock through the handle, driving the man screaming from the stage. The chieftains were duly impressed, and the rebellion quelled. © 2008 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Vision; Attention
Link ID: 11896 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK (AP)-- Biogen Idec Inc. (NASDAQ:BIIB) and Elan Corp. defended their multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri on Friday after reporting two new cases of a potentially fatal side effect, saying the treatment is still worth the risk to patients. There are no plans to pull the drug off the market, and the company said its current monitoring program for cases of a rare but sometimes fatal brain disorder is adequate. The announcement of two new cases of the rare viral infection called progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, or PML, sent shares for both companies plummeting and reignited already simmering concerns about the drug's sales potential. It was pulled from the market in 2005 after being linked to the rare brain disease but was reintroduced under restricted sales conditions in mid-2006. "These cases underscore the importance of continued clinical vigilance so PML can be discovered and managed appropriately," said Dr. Cecil B. Pickett, president of research and development at Biogen. He and several other executives tried to allay concerns over additional cases during a conference call with financial investors and analysts Friday morning. The company said it would also hold calls with several physician and patient groups. The risks associated with the drug are clearly labeled, the company said, and all patients are not only notified but have to sign a waiver acknowledging the risks. PML almost always occurs in people with a severe immune deficiency, as is the case with most patients taking Tysabri. Copyright 2008 The Associated Press

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 11895 - Posted: 08.02.2008

Helen Philips The Human Brain - With one hundred billion nerve cells, the complexity is mind-boggling. Learn more in our cutting edge special report. The brain is the most complex organ in the human body. It produces our every thought, action, memory, feeling and experience of the world. This jelly-like mass of tissue, weighing in at around 1.4 kilograms, contains a staggering one hundred billion nerve cells, or neurons. The complexity of the connectivity between these cells is mind-boggling. Each neuron can make contact with thousands or even tens of thousands of others, via tiny structures called synapses. Our brains form a million new connections for every second of our lives. The pattern and strength of the connections is constantly changing and no two brains are alike. It is in these changing connections that memories are stored, habits learned and personalities shaped, by reinforcing certain patterns of brain activity, and losing others. While people often speak of their "grey matter", the brain also contains white matter. The grey matter is the cell bodies of the neurons, while the white matter is the branching network of thread-like tendrils - called dendrites and axons - that spread out from the cell bodies to connect to other neurons. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 11894 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Tamsin Osborne Remember when your mum told you that playing outside was good for you? She may have had a point, at least as far as your eyesight is concerned. Researchers in Australia have found an association between high levels of outdoor activity and low rates of short-sightedness, or myopia, in children. The prevalence of childhood myopia has increased dramatically in recent decades. With rates of 80% in some East Asian populations, the search is on for possible causes. "We know that there are genetic associations with myopia," says Kathryn Rose of the University of Sydney in Australia. "But the rapid changes in myopia prevalence are not consistent with a simple genetic determination, since gene pools do not change sufficiently fast." Suspecting that environmental factors might also be involved, Rose and colleagues set about investigating the effect that time spent outdoors has on the prevalence of myopia. In the study, 2367 12-year-old Australian schoolchildren underwent eye examinations and completed questionnaires about their daily activities. The lowest rates of myopia were associated with the highest rates of outdoor activity, irrespective of how much near work, such as reading, the children did. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 11893 - Posted: 06.24.2010