By Tina Hesman Saey Timing is everything, especially when it comes to basic biological functions such as eating, sleeping and detoxifying. Scientists have known for ages that metabolism is tied to the body’s daily rhythms, but have not known how. Now, two groups of researchers report in the July 25 Cell the discovery of a molecule that links metabolism to the circadian clock. The missing link turns out to be a protein called sirtuin 1 or SIRT1, which is also a key regulator of aging. Uncovering the mechanism that links metabolism and circadian rhythms could lead to drugs to combat obesity, aging and jetlag and help shift workers reset their body clocks. Already, SIRT1 is the target of resveratrol, a molecule found in red wine and other foods and that mimics the health benefits of a nutritious, calorie-restricted diet. “It’s an interesting connection,” says Herman Wijnen, a circadian geneticist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville who was not involved in the new studies. “It helps us understand one important aspect of how clocks and metabolism relate to each other.” Body rhythms are governed by molecular clocks that take about a day to complete a full cycle, hence the name circadian clock. The clocks are composed of proteins whose concentrations or levels of activity rise and fall like the tide. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11861 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By David Malakoff Zip. Zilch. Nada. There's no real difference between the scores of U.S. boys and girls on common math tests, according to a massive new study. Educators hope the finding will finally dispel lingering perceptions that girls don't measure up to boys when it comes to crunching numbers. "This shows there's no issue of intellectual ability--and that's a message we still need to get out to some of our parents and teachers," says Henry "Hank" Kepner, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in Reston, Virginia. It won't be a new message. Nearly 20 years ago, a large-scale study led by psychologist Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, found a "trivial" gap in math test scores between boys and girls in elementary and middle school. But it did suggest that boys were better at solving more complex problems by the time they got to high school. Now, even that small gap has disappeared, Hyde reports in tomorrow's issue of Science. Her team sifted through scores from standardized tests taken in 2005, 2006, and 2007 by nearly 7 million students in 10 states. Overall, the researchers found "no gender difference" in scores among children in grades two through 11. Among students with the highest test scores, the team did find that white boys outnumbered white girls by about two to one. Among Asians, however, that result was nearly reversed. Hyde says that suggests that cultural and social factors, not gender alone, influence how well students perform on tests. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Intelligence
Link ID: 11860 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Matt Kaplan The splashes, barks and grunts of baleen whales carry much more meaning than biologists thought, according to the latest survey of the marine mammals. The scientists behind the study say that these noises could be the ideal characteristics for conservationists to monitor to understand the growing impact of noises made by humans on the underwater environment. The songs of baleen whales — which have characteristic mouth combs, which they use for filter feeding — have been studied extensively, as have the non-song communications of toothed whales. But non-song communication in baleen whales has received little attention. “Most people focus on the song,” says Rebecca Dunlop at the University of Queensland in Australia. “It is simply amazing how much we were missing by not paying attention to all of the other [sounds] that the animals actually make.” Although studies of humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae, in the 1980s had noted these sounds, Dunlop and her colleagues took things a step further by monitoring a population of humpbacks every year between 2002 and 2005 as they migrated from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to the Antarctic. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group –

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 11859 - Posted: 06.24.2010

From The Economist print edition A new school of economists is controversially turning to neuroscience to improve the dismal science FOR all the undoubted wit of their neuroscience-inspired concept album, “Heavy Mental”—songs include “Mind-Body Problem” and “All in a Nut”—The Amygdaloids are unlikely to loom large in the annals of rock and roll. Yet when the history of economics is finally written, Joseph LeDoux, the New York band’s singer-guitarist, may deserve at least a footnote. In 1996 Mr LeDoux, who by day is a professor of neuroscience at New York University, published a book, “The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life”, that helped to inspire what is today one of the liveliest and most controversial areas of economic research: neuroeconomics. In the late 1990s a generation of academic economists had their eyes opened by Mr LeDoux’s and other accounts of how studies of the brain using recently developed techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed that different bits of the old grey matter are associated with different sorts of emotional and decision-making activity. The amygdalas are an example. Neuroscientists have shown that these almond-shaped clusters of neurons deep inside the medial temporal lobes play a key role in the formation of emotional responses such as fear. © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2008.

Keyword: Emotions; Brain imaging
Link ID: 11858 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Simple, everyday movements require the coordination of dozens of muscles, guided by the activity of hundreds of motor neurons. Now, researchers have revealed an important step in the process that guides the early development of neurons themselves, as they establish the precise connections between the spinal cord and muscles. This knowledge will help scientists search for drugs to treat diseases that destroy motor neurons, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease. As a vertebrate organism develops, the long, outstretched processes of motor neurons wend their way from the spinal column to wire up every muscle in the body. In mammals, many hundreds of different types of motor neurons are needed to control the variety of muscle types used to coordinate movement. The highly specialized motor neurons that innervate muscles in the arms, legs, hands, and feet are the most recent of these to evolve. As an animal develops, these neurons become increasingly specialized - first establishing themselves as motor neurons, then taking on the characteristics needed to control a limb, then preparing to target a specific muscle. Proper function depends on each of these neurons finding its way from the spinal cord to the group of muscle cells that it is equipped to control. Now, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Thomas M. Jessell, working together with Jeremy Dasen of New York University and Philip Tucker of The University of Texas at Austin, has discovered the genetic recipe for making these specialized motor neurons. The key ingredient is a gene called Foxp1, which regulates the activity of a series of crucial patterning genes of the Hox family, and thereby coordinates the identity and connectivity of motor neurons. Without FoxP1, the axons of motor neurons that extend into an animal's limb wander aimlessly and connect to muscles at random, Jessell and Dasen have found. The paper describing these findings is published in the July 25, 2008, issue of the journal Cell. © 2008 Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 11857 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Alzheimer's may not affect knowledge as early as previously thought People with dementia may remember more than it first appears, according to researchers in Dundee and Fife. They believe knowledge may not be destroyed in conditions such as Alzheimer's disease until later than previously thought. The academics concluded that often patients would be able to recall facts, but became confused by the way the questions were asked. The research was carried out by Dundee, Abertay and St Andrews universities. The researchers asked patients to define simple words, such as "monkey", "salmon" or "tractor". Professor Trevor Harley, from Dundee University, explained: "People with dementia are notoriously bad at this sort of task: at first sight it looks like they've lost most of the detailed knowledge of the word. For example, the only thing they appear to know about a monkey might just be that it's an animal. "The assumption has been that Alzheimer's disease causes this knowledge to be destroyed. However, we found that if you probe the patient in the right way with appropriate questions that support them to search their stored knowledge, they can often generate more detailed information. That is, the knowledge isn't always lost at all. Of course eventually the information might be completely lost, but this might happen much later than people have previously thought." Clive Evers from the Alzheimer's Society welcomed the findings. He said: "As dementia progresses communication often becomes more difficult but this does not necessarily mean that a person's understanding has diminished. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 11856 - Posted: 07.24.2008

By Anna-Marie Lever Female bottlenose dolphins whistle 10 times more often than usual after giving birth in order to help newborns recognise who is "mum". The findings by a US team appear in the journal Marine Mammal Science. These "signature whistles" are unique to each animal, allowing them to be used for identification. Bottlenose dolphins are highly social; in their first weeks, calves encounter many adult females that they could potentially mistake for their mothers. "The most obvious explanation for the increase in maternal signature whistle production is the need for the mother to be in contact with her calf," zoologist Dr Deborah Fripp from Dallas Zoo suggested. "However, the decrease in signature whistle production of [dolphin] mother Lotty after three weeks does not fit this idea, especially as calves actually wander further from their mothers as they get older." Instead, Dr Fripp said a likely purpose of this whistling enables a process called imprinting, whereby the calf learns to recognise its mother. "Bottlenose dolphins can swim at birth and are highly social. In other species, these traits are associated with imprinting. A calf can easily get separated from its mother and find itself among many other dolphins." BBC © MMVIII

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 11855 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Roger Dobson Men have long been accused of judging women on looks alone, but even the plainest Jane can get their hormones raging, a study has found. Research involving a group of male students found that their levels of the hormone testosterone increased to the same extent whether they were talking to a young woman they found attractive – or to one they didn't fancy much at all. After 300 seconds alone in the same room as a woman they had never met before, and in some cases did not find particularly attractive, the men's testosterone levels of the hormone had shot up by an average of around eight per cent. The study's authors believe the rise in testosterone may be an automatic and unconscious reaction that has evolved in man when faced with a woman, to prepare him for possible mating opportunities. The rising levels may then fuel more visible changes in male behaviour that occur in the presence of a woman, including a squaring of shoulders, an upright posture, and greater use of hands - and even, it is suggested, a flaring of the nostrils. The rise in the male hormone may also be the reason why men are more likely to tell women exaggerated stories about their job, career, education and earnings, the researchers believe. The study, published in the journal Hormones and Behaviour, involved 63 male students aged 21 to 25 who were not aware of the purpose of the study. © Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2008

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 11854 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By On Amir The human mind is a remarkable device. Nevertheless, it is not without limits. Recently, a growing body of research has focused on a particular mental limitation, which has to do with our ability to use a mental trait known as executive function. When you focus on a specific task for an extended period of time or choose to eat a salad instead of a piece of cake, you are flexing your executive function muscles. Both thought processes require conscious effort-you have to resist the temptation to let your mind wander or to indulge in the sweet dessert. It turns out, however, that use of executive function—a talent we all rely on throughout the day—draws upon a single resource of limited capacity in the brain. When this resource is exhausted by one activity, our mental capacity may be severely hindered in another, seemingly unrelated activity. Imagine, for a moment, that you are facing a very difficult decision about which of two job offers to accept. One position offers good pay and job security, but is pretty mundane, whereas the other job is really interesting and offers reasonable pay, but has questionable job security. Clearly you can go about resolving this dilemma in many ways. Few people, however, would say that your decision should be affected or influenced by whether or not you resisted the urge to eat cookies prior to contemplating the job offers. A decade of psychology research suggests otherwise. Unrelated activities that tax the executive function have important lingering effects, and may disrupt your ability to make such an important decision. In other words, you might choose the wrong job because you didn't eat a cookie. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 11853 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rachel Zelkowitz Who needs a GPS when you have, well, whatever migratory birds and sea turtles have? For centuries, humans have marveled at the ability of these and other animals to navigate the globe, in some cases returning to the same breeding spot year after year from as far as 15,000 kilometers away. How they find their way remains a mystery, but new research suggests their prowess may depend on the ability to "see" Earth's magnetic field. Researchers agree that however animals navigate, they use Earth's magnetic field as a guide. Theories about how animals detect these fields, a property called magnetosensitivity, generally fall into two camps. One group argues that tiny crystals of a magnetic mineral known as magnetite, which is found in the brains of some birds and in bacteria, are key. Other scientists say that animals carry photoreceptor molecules that enable them to actually "see" magnetic fields. How these molecules work is not clear, but some researchers think light might destabilize electrons in the photoreceptors, making them susceptible to Earth's magnetic pull. Previous work has shown that animals must be able to respond to blue light to detect magnetic fields, so researchers have eyed cryptochrome, a protein that allows plants and animals to sense blue light, as a likely candidate for the magnetosensitivity photoreceptor. But it's hard to isolate the effects of a single protein in a complex organism. So a team of researchers from the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester swapped small, forgoing migratory birds and other large animals for the humble fruit fly. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Animal Migration; Vision
Link ID: 11852 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By David Malakoff To sleep, perchance to dream--and maybe not get devoured? When it comes to how much shuteye animals get in the wild, fear and food matter most. Researchers have spent decades trying to understand the confusing array of sleep patterns found in mammals. A donkey typically snoozes for just 3 hours a day, for instance, and armadillos and bats can be dead to the world for 20 hours a day. To explain the differences, scientists have offered a slew of theories, ranging from the idea that smaller animals need more sleep to conserve energy and maintain body temperature to the need to avoid predators. It's been hard to sort out which of these ideas have legs, however. In part, that's because many sleep studies take place in artificial laboratory settings, coloring the results. And there are relatively few studies of sleep habits in the wild; wiring up sleep monitors to free-ranging animals can be difficult (ScienceNOW, 14 May). In one of the most comprehensive efforts yet to tackle the question, a team led by evolutionary biologist Isabella Capellini of Durham University in the U.K. spent 2 years combing through the scientific literature and stockpiling information on the sleep habits of more than 150 mammals. Then they used statistical tools to see what factors best explained the sleep habits of about 60 of the best studied creatures. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sleep; Evolution
Link ID: 11851 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lauren Cahoon "Watch out!" It's a simple phrase, but researchers have long debated whether nonhuman primates use something like it. A new study indicates that they do: Even when not threatened themselves, African blue monkeys warn neighbors of nearby predators. However, some skeptics maintain that the animals are acting out of fear, not concern for others. Blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis stuhlmanni) have two predator-specific calls: the "hack," a low, gagging sound that warns about eagles, and the "pyow," which sounds a bit like a laser gun and warns about more general dangers on the ground, such as leopards. When a monkey sounds a particular alarm, its neighbors know to look out for that predator. Although listeners clearly understand the warnings, many scientists think that hack and pyow reflect only a basic, emotional response--a scream of fear rather than a "Hey you, look out!" That's not what Klaus Zuberbühler noticed in a Ugandan nature reserve. The psychologist at the University of St. Andrews in Fife, U.K., and colleagues played recordings of hacks and pyows from a loudspeaker near blue monkey troops, which are usually made up of a lead male and about 10 to 40 females and young. The recorded sounds prompted the lead male to follow up with his own alarm call, and he typically repeated the cry about 23 times. However, if a female or baby was close to the loudspeaker--the "predator"--the males gave an average of 42 cries. It didn't matter how close the male was to the danger; he sounded the red-alert alarm only when the females and young appeared to be at risk. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 11850 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas -- Just as humans tune into individual radio stations, an unusual Chinese frog can shift its hearing from one frequency to another in order to selectively choose what it hears, according to a paper published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The frog, Odorrana tormota, is the only known animal in the world that can manipulate its hearing system to select particular frequencies. Humans appear to possess a modicum of control, but our system is slow compared to that of the frog and we cannot, with precision, tune our ears to match sounds. The rare amphibian likely evolved its hearing talent out of necessity, since its environment is so noisy. "Their calling sites are on the steep banks of a fast-flowing body of water -- the Tao Hua Creek (at Huangshan Hot Springs in central China)," co-author Albert Feng told Discovery News. Feng, a professor of molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, added that the site is especially noisy after spring showers. He pointed out that humans often cannot hear well over heavy rains either. © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Hearing; Attention
Link ID: 11849 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Abbott Alison Severely depressed patients who do not respond to conventional therapy may be helped by deep brain stimulation (DBS), according to the most-extensive study to date of the experimental procedure. In a clinical trial in Toronto, Canada, 12 out of 20 patients who had stimulating electrodes placed in a brain area called the subcallosal cingulated gyrus showed significant improvement in their depression, with seven of them going into full remission. The benefits lasted at least a year, according to the results published this week in the journal Biological Psychiatry1. Patients in the study had failed to respond to cognitive therapy, antidepressant drugs and electroconvulsant therapy. The research team published results of DBS on their first six patients in 20052. Four of those patients responded well, and were still showing significant improvement after the trial finished six months later. The new research represents the largest trial on DBS for depression to follow patients for a full year. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 11848 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The one-year results from a new surgical approach that targets tough-to-treat depression show a significant benefit, according to Canadian researchers. Deep brain stimulation, in which electrical impulses are sent through electrodes that are implanted in the section of the brain called the subcallosal cingulate gyrus, was shown to offer relief from depression in 60 per cent of patients, say researchers at Toronto Western Hospital. These patients, who suffered from major depressant disorder, a severe form of depression that is unresponsive to other treatments, were able to reduce their medication as symptoms improved. "Our research confirmed that 60 per cent of patients have shown a clinically significant response to the surgery and the benefits were sustained for at least one year," said Dr. Andres Lozano, neurosurgeon at Krembil Neurosciences Centre, Toronto Western Hospital, in a release. The therapy appears to change the metabolic activity of what's known as the depression circuit. This means that, in effect, the brain is rewired, altering the cycle of depression. In the study, researchers found that one month after surgery, 35 per cent of patients responded well to the therapy, with 10 per cent of patients entering remission. Six months after surgery, 60 per cent of patients responded well to the surgery and 35 per cent were in remission. © CBC 2008

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 11847 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER For the bubbleheaded young Narcissus of myth, the mirror spun a fatal fantasy, and the beautiful boy chose to die by the side of a reflecting pond rather than leave his “beloved” behind. For the aging narcissist of Shakespeare’s 62nd sonnet, the mirror delivered a much-needed whack to his vanity, the sight of a face “beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity” underscoring the limits of self-love. Whether made of highly polished metal or of glass with a coating of metal on the back, mirrors have fascinated people for millennia: ancient Egyptians were often depicted holding hand mirrors. With their capacity to reflect back nearly all incident light upon them and so recapitulate the scene they face, mirrors are like pieces of dreams, their images hyper-real and profoundly fake. Mirrors reveal truths you may not want to see. Give them a little smoke and a house to call their own, and mirrors will tell you nothing but lies. To scientists, the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of mirrors make them powerful tools for exploring questions about perception and cognition in humans and other neuronally gifted species, and how the brain interprets and acts upon the great tides of sensory information from the external world. They are using mirrors to study how the brain decides what is self and what is other, how it judges distances and trajectories of objects, and how it reconstructs the richly three-dimensional quality of the outside world from what is essentially a two-dimensional snapshot taken by the retina’s flat sheet of receptor cells. They are applying mirrors in medicine, to create reflected images of patients’ limbs or other body parts and thus trick the brain into healing itself. Mirror therapy has been successful in treating disorders like phantom limb syndrome, chronic pain and post-stroke paralysis. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Vision
Link ID: 11846 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Belle Elving I can't tell right from left. It hasn't been a serious problem. Except that night on a freeway heading into San Francisco when, befuddled by an "Exit Left" sign, I hit the brakes and got totaled by a really fast sports car. Or the day I directed a footsore family of tourists 180 degrees away from the White House. Or the time I assembled an Ikea bookcase with the dowel holes for the shelves on the outside. Or the countless times I've annoyed my husband by telling him "Turn, um, left. No wait, I'm sorry . . ." It's a mild disability that has not seriously limited my options in life. Of course, a career in air traffic control would have been unwise. Synchronized swimming and ballroom dancing were not in the cards. (Playing cards is a bit of a problem, actually. I'm never sure which way to pass them.) But I'm usually fine driving alone. I know which way I want to turn; I just don't know what to call it. On the upside, it's delightful to discover others who share this condition, including, as it happens, the editor of the Health section and the editor who wrote the accompanying medical misadventure story. And we are not that small a group. John R. Clarke, a professor of surgery at Drexel University in Philadelphia, estimates that about 15 percent of the population faces some degree of left/right challenge. Eric Chudler, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, puts the figure a bit higher, having found that more than 26 percent of college students and 19 percent of college professors acknowledge having difficulty telling left from right -- occasionally, frequently or always. © 2008 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Laterality
Link ID: 11845 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nikhil Swaminathan Researchers have discovered early blood markers in people genetically predisposed to develop Huntington's disease, a mysterious neurodegenerative disorder. These signs may provide future targets for staving off or even preventing symptoms from developing. Huntington's disease, which affects an estimated 30,000 Americans, kills neurons (nerve cells), which leads to cognitive difficulties, a loss of movement control and emotional distress. A carrier typically does not experience symptoms until he or she is in her 30s or 40s, and lives an average of 15 to 20 years once they show up. Patients ultimately die of heart failure, pneumonia or choking triggered by the disorder. Children with a parent who has the disease have a 50 percent chance of inheriting the mutated huntingtin gene that causes it. In other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's—which primarily affects a person's motor abilities—scientists know that nerve cells begin to die long before symptoms appear. Researchers wondered if the same was true in Huntington's. Previous research indicated this was the case in mice, but this is the first study to document presymptomatic dysfunction in humans. "In gene carriers, before they show signs of the disease, the neurodegeneration process has already started," says Sarah Tabrizi, a neurologist at University College London and coauthor of the study, which appears in The Journal of Experimental Medicine. "This indicates that the process of neuronal dysfunction which goes on to neuronal degeneration is theoretically rescuable." © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 11844 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Andrea Lu It's 4 a.m. and you're stumbling to the bathroom, regretting that bottle of water you chugged before bed. This early morning trip to the loo may seem like a simple response to a full bladder, but new research in rats suggests that your bladder may actually be influencing various brain areas, including those responsible for memory and concentration. Frequent trips to the bathroom are a regular annoyance for one of every six people in the United States. They have a condition known as overactive bladder, which sometimes results from an obstruction--an enlarged prostate, for example--that makes the bladder muscles contract involuntarily. Patients have a recurrent urge to urinate, a feeling that disrupts their sleep. Normally, when the bladder fills, it sends a signal to the Barrington's nucleus, a brain region that controls bladder contraction and urination. But the Barrington's nucleus also sends signals to the locus ceruleus, an area important in arousal and attention. Could an overactive bladder somehow be changing the way the brain works? Researchers led by neuroscientist Rita Valentino of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania mimicked an obstructed bladder in a group of male rats by surgically narrowing the outlets from the organ. After 2 to 4 weeks, the researchers measured electrical activity in the Barrington's nucleus and the locus ceruleus. The Barrington's nucleus showed less activity in response to bladder filling in obstructed rats than in normal rats, which could explain the loss of bladder control in people with overactive bladder, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 11843 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Ewen Callaway Human-frog hybrids might reveal the neurological secrets of autism. By fusing cells from the preserved brains of deceased autistic patients with the eggs of a carnivorous African frog called Xenopus, scientists have started investigating the way the brain cells of people with autism behave. The frog eggs work a little like human neurons and the hybrid cells act as a surrogate of a living brain with the condition. "It's almost as if you were studying a neuron in the human brain," says Ricardo Miledi, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine, who developed the approach and has previously used Xenopus eggs to study epilepsy. Miledi's earlier work has suggested that some brain cells of epilepsy patients have trouble sensing a molecule that helps damp down neuron activity. The proteins in question, called neurotransmitter receptors, sense the chemicals that neurons use to communicate, and Miledi thinks that problems with these proteins underlie epilepsy and other disorders Some researchers blame autism on a malfunction in mirror neurons, cells that play a vital role in understanding the actions of others people. To see if abnormalities in neurotransmitter signalling also underlie autism, Miledi's team collected brain samples from six deceased autistic patients, aged eight to 39. They fused brain-cell membranes, which house neurotransmitter receptors, together with Xenopus egg membranes. As a control, they did the same thing with brain cells from patients with no history of mental disorder. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 11842 - Posted: 06.24.2010