CHICAGO - U.S. researchers have found a genetic link between autism and a muscle-weakening disorder known as mitochondrial disease, they said on Sunday, in a finding that may open new avenues of research into the causes of autism. “Recent studies have suggested that as many 20 percent of patients with autism have markers for mitochondrial disease,” said Dr. John Shoffner, a neurologist and geneticist at Medical Neurogenetics in Atlanta, who presented his findings at the American Academy of Neurology meeting in Chicago. “There has really not been much work done so far to push that issue,” Shoffner said in a telephone interview. Mitochondrial diseases are a set of genetic disorders in which energy-producing structures in cells are impaired. The disease is often triggered by an illness, such as a high fever, which can result in severe muscle weakening. Shoffner wanted to see if he could identify the underlying genetic mechanisms that might explain this link. He evaluated genetic samples and clinical information gathered on 37 children diagnosed with autism who had been evaluated at his clinic for mitochondrial disease. Copyright 2008 Reuters.

Keyword: Autism; Muscles
Link ID: 11518 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Pascal Belin The use of vocalizations, such as grunts, songs or barks, is extremely common throughout the animal kingdom. Nevertheless, humans are the only species in which these vocalizations have attained the sophistication and communicative effectiveness of speech. How did our ancestors become the only speaking animals, some tens of thousand years ago? Did this change happen abruptly, involving the sudden appearance of a new cerebral region or pattern of cerebral connections? Or did it happen through a more gradual evolutionary process, in which brain structures already present to some extent in other animals were put to a different and more complex use in the human brain? A recent study yields critical new information, uncovering what could constitute the "missing link" between the brain of vocalizing, non-human species and the human brain: evidence that a cerebral region specialized for processing voice, known to exist in the human brain, has a counterpart in the brain of macaques. Neuroscientist Chris Petkov of the Max Planck Institute and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the macaque brain. They measured cerebral activity of awake macaque monkeys who were listening to different categories of natural sounds, including macaque vocalizations. They found evidence for a "voice area" in the auditory cortex of these macaques: a discrete region of the anterior temporal lobe in which brain activity was greater for macaque vocalizations than for other sound categories such as natural sounds. This region was observed in several different individuals, even under condition of total anaesthesia. Even more remarkably, the region showed repetition-induced reduction of activity--or neuronal adaptation--in response to different calls coming from a same individual. This finding suggests that this brain region is processing information about the identity of the speaker, a phenomenon that is also observed in the human voice area. © 1995-2007 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 11517 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GARY MARCUS How much would you pay to have a small memory chip implanted in your brain if that chip would double the capacity of your short-term memory? Or guarantee that you would never again forget a face or a name? There’s good reason to consider such offers. Although our memories are sometimes spectacular — we are very good at recognizing photos, for example — our memory capacities are often disappointing. Faulty memories have been known to lead to erroneous eyewitness testimony (and false imprisonment), to marital friction (in the form of overlooked anniversaries) and even death (sky divers have been known to forget to pull their ripcords — accounting, by one estimate, for approximately 6 percent of sky-diving fatalities). The dubious dynamics of memory leave us vulnerable to the predations of spin doctors (because a phrase like “death tax” automatically brings to mind a different set of associations than “estate tax”), the pitfalls of stereotyping (in which easily accessible memories wash out less common counterexamples) and what the psychologist Timothy Wilson calls “mental contamination.” To the extent that we frequently can’t separate relevant information from irrelevant information, memory is often the culprit. All this becomes even more poignant when you compare our memories to those of the average laptop. Whereas it takes the average human child weeks or even months or years to memorize something as simple as a multiplication table, any modern computer can memorize any table in an instant — and never forget it. Why can’t we do the same? Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 11516 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Ewen Callaway Long before you decided to read this story, your brain may have already said "click that link". By scanning the brains of test subjects as they pressed one button or another – though not a computer mouse – researchers pinpointed a signal that divulged the decision about seven seconds before people ever realised their choice. The discovery has implications for mind-reading, and the nature of free will. "Our decisions are predetermined unconsciously a long time before our consciousness kicks in," says John-Dylan Haynes, a neuroscientist at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, who led the study. It definitely throws our concept of free will into doubt, he adds. This is by no means the first time scientists have cast doubt on conscious free will. In the early 1980s, the late neuroscientist Benjamin Libet uncovered a spark of brain activity three tenths of a second before subjects opted to lift a finger. The activity flickered in a region of the brain involved in planning body movement. But this region might perform only the final mental calculations to move, not the initial decision to lift a finger, Haynes says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 11515 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Brandon Keim You may think you decided to read this story -- but in fact, your brain made the decision long before you knew about it. In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them. The decision studied -- whether to hit a button with one's left or right hand -- may not be representative of complicated choices that are more integrally tied to our sense of self-direction. Regardless, the findings raise profound questions about the nature of self and autonomy: How free is our will? Is conscious choice just an illusion? "Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done," said study co-author John-Dylan Haynes, a Max Planck Institute neuroscientist. Haynes updated a classic experiment by the late Benjamin Libet, who showed that a brain region involved in coordinating motor activity fired a fraction of a second before test subjects chose to push a button. Later studies supported Libet's theory that subconscious activity preceded and determined conscious choice -- but none found such a vast gap between a decision and the experience of making it as Haynes' study has. © 2008 CondéNet, Inc.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 11514 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Carla K. Johnson A new Harvard study finds that babies and toddlers who sleep fewer than 12 hours daily are at greater risk for being overweight in preschool, startling evidence that the link between sleep and obesity may affect even very young children. TV viewing heightened the effect. The children who slept the least and watched the most television had the greatest chance of becoming obese. "The two (behaviors) are acting independently. In combination, they are particularly risky," said the study's lead author, Dr. Elsie Taveras of Harvard Medical School. The findings, published in April's Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, are based on mothers' reports of their babies' sleep habits and TV viewing, and direct measures of the children's height, weight and skin-fold thickness. Starting when the babies were 6 months old, mothers were asked how long their children napped during the day and how long they slept at night. Moms were asked again when the children were 1 and 2 years old. They were asked about TV time when the children reached age 2. The researchers combined the sleep answers to find an average pattern for each child during the first two years of life. They found 586 of the children slept an average of 12 or more hours a day, and 329 of the children slept less than that. © 2008 Hearst Communications Inc.

Keyword: Sleep; Obesity
Link ID: 11513 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Alan Mozes -- Construction foreman Jim Mueller was in his early 30s when his memory started to go. He'd forget things: his schedule, his equipment, where he was, and where he was going. Sometimes even the names of his daughters and his wife. But nothing prepared the Mueller family for the doctor's verdict. "When they said Jim had Alzheimer's, I was in shock," Jim's wife, Michelle, quietly recalls. "I mean, I had heard of Alzheimer's because of President Reagan. And I had worked at one time when I was younger to care for someone with Alzheimer's (but) I thought that was for people when they got older. And I really didn't believe it." Jim Mueller, now 39, is, in fact, just one of an estimated 500,000 Americans currently battling the daily ravages of early-onset Alzheimer's (sometimes called young-onset Alzheimer's) -- a form of the incurable and devastating neurodegenerative disease that strikes those in their mid-30s to mid-60s. For the Mueller family, the unexpected havoc wrought by Jim's Alzheimer's diagnosis at the age of 36 has turned every facet of their lives completely upside down. "It was a shock to me, too," Jim confirms. "I thought Alzheimer's, I thought gray hair. And we were just starting to get our feet wet. Just starting our family. Now we've lost everything." © 2008 Scout News LLC.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 11512 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE If Rod Serling were alive and writing episodes for “The Twilight Zone,” odds are he would have leaped on the true story of Anne Adams, a Canadian scientist turned artist who died of a rare brain disease last year. Trained in mathematics, chemistry and biology, Dr. Adams left her career as a teacher and bench scientist in 1986 to take care of a son who had been seriously injured in a car accident and was not expected to live. But the young man made a miraculous recovery. After seven weeks, he threw away his crutches and went back to school. According her husband, Robert, Dr. Adams then decided to abandon science and take up art. She had dabbled with drawing when young, he said in a recent telephone interview, but now she had an intense all-or-nothing drive to paint. “Anne spent every day from 9 to 5 in her art studio,” said Robert Adams, a retired mathematician. Early on, she painted architectural portraits of houses in the West Vancouver, British Columbia, neighborhood where they lived. In 1994, Dr. Adams became fascinated with the music of the composer Maurice Ravel, her husband recalled. At age 53, she painted “Unravelling Bolero” a work that translated the famous musical score into visual form. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 11511 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Molly C. Chalfin, Katrina A. Karkazis, Emily R. Murphy 2008. The American Journal of Bioethics 8(1):1 How and why women and men are different is a topic of enduring scientific and public interest. Over the past decade, the number of neuroscience studies documenting sex differences in brain anatomy, chemistry, and function, and involving cognitive domains such as emotion, memory, and learning, has exploded (Cahill 2006). Although scholars in the field of neuroethics have explored advances in neuroscience from many angles, few, if any, have paid attention to neuroscientific work on sex differences or to gender as a primary category of analysis. Why should we pay special attention to the neuroscience of sex differences? Perhaps the most important reason is that this work will prove important for contested ideas about the so-called nature of human nature. One only need look to the Larry Summers debacle in 2005 to see how contentious the topic is and how far-reaching its effects may be. Although the question of how and why women and men are different is an old one, neuroscience's use of cutting-edge technology - coupled with a growing reliance on science to shed light on complex human behavior - increases the likelihood that this work will leap to the forefront of public discussion and debate about social equality. While neuroscience is concerned with elucidating the origin and extent of behavioral and cognitive differences between women and men, the questions that predominate for us are of a different nature: How ought we disseminate this information into a sensitive social environment that has a history of bias and discrimination against women? What are the implications of this work for our understandings of what makes us women and men? How should this research be applied in educational, medical, and legal contexts, if at all? ©2000-5 Taylor & Francis Group & bioethics education network

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11510 - Posted: 06.24.2010

From The Economist print edition FASHION is a strange thing, and many fields are susceptible to it—not least, medicine. There has, for example, been a vogue (among commentators, if not among doctors) to ascribe the rising number of cases of autism diagnosed over the past couple of decades to childhood vaccinations against measles, mumps and rubella. That this is fashion rather than reality is suggested by the fact that the explanation proffered in Britain has been that such vaccines provoke an immune response that damages the nervous system, whereas Americans have blamed residual mercury in the same vaccines. It is now pretty well established that vaccination does not create autism. But the rise in the number of recorded cases is real enough. In Britain, for example, the rate of diagnosis has risen from 50 per 100,000 in 1990 to 400 per 100,000 today. That must have a cause. And one popular hypothesis is that this cause, too, is fashion—but among doctors rather than columnists. Demonstrating that has been difficult. But a paper in this month's Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, by Dorothy Bishop and her colleagues at Oxford University, goes a long way towards doing so. Dr Bishop reasoned it was unlikely that people now labelled autistic would, in the past, have been thought healthy, but that it was quite plausible they might have been given some other diagnosis. With this in mind, she looked at a group who had been diagnosed as children with a particular condition that was not autism, and rediagnosed them using present-day criteria. © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2008

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 11509 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nikhil Swaminathan Scientists for the first time have identified long-term changes in mice brains that may shed light on why addicts get hooked on drugs—in this case methamphetamines—and have such a tough time kicking the habit. The findings, reported in the journal Neuron, could set the stage for new ways to block cravings—and help addicts dry out. Researchers, using fluorescent tracer dye, discovered that mice given methamphetamines for 10 days (roughly equivalent to a human using it for two years) had suppressed activity in a certain area of their brains. Much to their surprise, normal function did not return even when the drug was stopped, but did when they administered a single dose of it again after the mice had been in withdrawal. Study co-author Nigel Bamford, a pediatric neurologist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, says that if similar changes occur in humans, it will indicate that an effective way to fight addiction may be to design therapies that target the affected area—the striatum, a forebrain region that controls movement but also has been linked to habit-forming behavior. Previous research has shown that the drug stimulates nerve cells in the midbrain to release dopamine into the synapses (connections between neurons) in the striatum. Dopamine (which is connected to reward processing, motivation and attention) is one of the brain's primary neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers by which one neuron triggers its neighbor to fire a nerve impulse. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 11508 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Constance Holden Reprogrammed body cells continue to show promise as a treatment for disease. Last year, scientists used the cells, called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, to successfully treat sickle cell disease in mice (ScienceNOW, 6 December 2007). Now, investigators have shown that neurons derived from iPS cells alleviate a Parkinson's-like movement disorder in rats. A team led by Marius Wernig, a postdoc in the lab of stem cell researcher Rudolf Jaenisch at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge generated iPS cells from mouse tail cells by adding four genes. The researchers then differentiated the cells into neural progenitor cells using the same techniques that guide the differentiation of embryonic stem cells. When the cells were injected into the brains of fetal mice, they developed into several types of brain cells and formed connections in a half-dozen brain regions. To see whether the iPS cells could be grown into dopamine-producing neurons that could be used to treat disease, the researchers gave adult rats a Parkinson's-like movement disorder. They did this by injecting a substance that killed dopamine neurons on one side of the brain, causing the rats to move in circles. Batches of dopamine neurons grown from the mouse iPS cells were then injected into the brain area--the striatum--most stricken by Parkinson's in five rats. Within 8 weeks, four of the five treated rats showed significant recovery of function and stopped going in circles, the researchers report online today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Stem Cells
Link ID: 11506 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Randolph E. Schmid -- Dyslexia affects different parts of children's brains depending on whether they are raised reading English or Chinese. That finding, reported in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, means that therapists may need to seek different methods of assisting dyslexic children from different cultures. "This finding was very surprising to us. We had not ever thought that dyslexics' brains are different for children who read in English and Chinese," said lead author Li-Hai Tan, a professor of linguistics and brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Hong Kong. "Our finding yields neurobiological clues to the cause of dyslexia." Millions of children worldwide are affected by dyslexia, a language-based learning disability that can include problems in reading, spelling, writing and pronouncing words. The International Dyslexia Association says there is no consensus on the exact number because not all children are screened, but estimates range from 8 percent to 15 percent of students. Reading an alphabetic language like English requires different skills than reading Chinese, which relies less on sound representation, instead using symbols to represent words. Past studies have suggested that the brain may use different networks of neurons in different languages, but none has suggested a difference in the structural parts of the brain involved, Tan explained. © 2008 Discovery Communications

Keyword: Dyslexia; Language
Link ID: 11505 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests. The drink has already been linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer's Disease, and a study by a US team for the Journal of Neuroinflammation may explain why. A vital barrier between the brain and the main blood supply of rabbits fed a fat-rich diet was protected in those given a caffeine supplement. UK experts said it was the "best evidence yet" of coffee's benefits. The "blood brain barrier" is a filter which protects the central nervous system from potentially harmful chemicals carried around in the rest of the bloodstream. Other studies have shown that high levels of cholesterol in the blood can make this barrier "leaky". Alzheimer's researchers suggest this makes the brain vulnerable to damage which can trigger or contribute to the condition. The University of North Dakota study used the equivalent to just one daily cup of coffee in their experiments on rabbits. After 12 weeks of a high-cholesterol diet, the blood brain barrier in those given caffeine was far more intact than in those given no caffeine. "Caffeine appears to block several of the disruptive effects of cholesterol that make the blood-brain barrier leaky," said Dr Jonathan Geiger, who led the study. High levels of cholesterol are a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, perhaps by compromising the protective nature of the blood brain barrier. Caffeine is a safe and readily available drug and its ability to stabilise the blood brain barrier means it could have an important part to play in therapies against neurological disorders." (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Alzheimers
Link ID: 11504 - Posted: 04.05.2008

Binge drinking teenagers are still at risk of absent-mindedness and forgetfulness days later, a study says. A team from Northumbria and Keele universities compared 26 binge drinkers with 34 non-bingers in memory tests, and found the drinkers fared worse. They told the British Psychological Society conference that binge drinking could be harming developing brains. A spokesman for the charity Addaction said drinking at dangerous levels was putting some young people at risk. Binge drinking is already known to affect people's memories of past events. In this study, the scientists looked at students aged 17 to 19 - a period when the brain is still developing. Binge drinking was defined as at least eight units a session for a man and six for a woman once or twice a week. The researchers said the binge drinkers studied consumed, on average, 30 units in just two sessions. The teenagers were tested three or four days after their last drinking session, so that their bodies would be free of alcohol. They were asked to answer questions about how often they forgot to carry out tasks they intended to do, such as meeting with friends. They were shown a video clip of a shopping trip after being given a couple of minutes to memorise a set of tasks prompted by various cues in the film, such as remembering to text a friend at a certain shop, or to check their bank accounts after seeing a person sitting on a bench. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 11503 - Posted: 04.05.2008

Sönke Johnsen and Kenneth J. Lohmann Like the theory of plate tectonics, the idea that animals can detect Earth's magnetic field has traveled the path from ridicule to well-established fact in little more than one generation. Dozens of experiments have now shown that diverse animal species, ranging from bees to salamanders to sea turtles to birds, have internal compasses. Some species use their compasses to navigate entire oceans, others to find better mud just a few inches away. Certain migratory species even appear to use the geographic variations in the strength and inclination of Earth's field to determine their position. But how animals sense magnetic fields remains a hotly contested topic. Whereas the physical basis of nearly all other senses has been determined, and a magnetoreception mechanism has been identified in bacteria, no one knows with certainty how any animal perceives magnetic fields. Finding this mechanism is thus the current grand challenge of sensory biology. The problem is difficult for several reasons. First, humans do not appear to have the ability to sense magnetic fields. Whereas most nonhuman senses, such as polarization detection and UV vision, are relatively straightforward extensions of human abilities, magnetoreception is not. As a result, neither intuitive understanding nor the medical literature on human senses provides much guidance. Another complicating factor is that biological tissue is essentially transparent to magnetic fields, which means that magnetoreceptors, unlike most other sensory receptors, need not be located on an animal's surface and might instead be anywhere in the body. That consideration transforms a routine two-dimensional visual inspection into a three-dimensional search requiring advanced imaging techniques. Another impediment is that large accessory structures for focusing and otherwise manipulating the field—the analogs of eardrums and lenses—are unlikely to exist because few materials of biological origin affect magnetic fields. Indeed, magnetoreception might be accomplished by a small number of microscopic, possibly intracellular structures scattered throughout the body, with no obvious structure devoted to magnetoreception. Finally, the weakness of the interaction between Earth's field and the magnetic moments of electrons and atoms, roughly one five-millionth of the thermal energy kT at body temperature, makes it difficult to even suggest a feasible mechanism. © 2007 by the American Institute of Physics

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 11502 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Dana Small, a neuroscientist at the John B. Pierce Laboratory in New Haven, Conn., and the Yale School of Medicine, sniffs out an answer. In a classic experiment, French researchers colored a white wine red with an odorless dye and asked a panel of wine experts to describe its taste. The connoisseurs described the wine using typical red wine descriptors rather than terms they would use to evaluate white wine, suggesting that the color played a significant role in the way they perceived the drink. Although sight is not technically part of taste, it certainly influences perception. Interestingly, food and drink are identified predominantly by the senses of smell and sight, not taste. Food can be identified by sight alone—we don't have to eat a strawberry to know it is a strawberry. The same goes for smell, in many cases. To our brains, "taste" is actually a fusion of a food's taste, smell and touch into a single sensation. This combination of qualities takes place because during chewing or sipping, all sensory information originates from a common location: whatever it is we're snacking on. Further, "flavor" is a more accurate term for what we commonly refer to as taste; therefore, smell not only influences but is an integral part of flavor. Pure taste sensations include sweet, sour, salty, bitter, savory and, debatably, fat. Cells that recognize these flavors reside in taste buds located on the tongue and the roof of the mouth. When food and drink are placed in the mouth, taste cells are activated and we perceive a flavor. Concurrently, whatever we are eating or sipping invariably contacts and activates sensory cells, located side-by-side with the taste cells, that allow us to perceive qualities such as temperature, spiciness or creaminess. We perceive the act of touch as tasting because the contact "captures" the flavor sensation. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 11501 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By KATE MURPHY Modern life is loud. The jolting buzz of an alarm clock awakens the ears to a daily din of trucks idling, sirens blaring, televisions droning, computers pinging and phones ringing — not to mention refrigerators humming and air-conditioners thrumming. But for the 12 million Americans who suffer from severe tinnitus, the phantom tones inside their head are louder than anything else. Often caused by prolonged or sudden exposure to loud noises, tinnitus (pronounced tin-NIGHT-us or TIN-nit-us) is becoming an increasingly common complaint, particularly among soldiers returning from combat, users of portable music players, and aging baby boomers reared on rock ’n’ roll. (Other causes include stress, some kinds of chemotherapy, head and neck trauma, sinus infections, and multiple sclerosis.) Although there is no cure, researchers say they have never had a better understanding of the cascade of physiological and psychological mechanisms responsible for tinnitus. As a result, new treatments under investigation — some of them already on the market — show promise in helping patients manage the ringing, pinging and hissing that otherwise drives them to distraction. The most promising therapies, experts say, are based on discoveries made in the last five years about the brain activity of people with tinnitus. With brain-scanning equipment like functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers in the United States and Europe have independently discovered that the brain areas responsible for interpreting sound and producing fearful emotions are exceptionally active in people who complain of tinnitus. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 11500 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER When Jeremy Wolfe of Harvard Medical School, speaking last week at a symposium devoted to the crossover theme of Art and Neuroscience, wanted to illustrate how the brain sees the world and how often it fumbles the job, he naturally turned to a great work of art. He flashed a slide of Ellsworth Kelly’s “Study for Colors for a Large Wall” on the screen, and the audience couldn’t help but perk to attention. The checkerboard painting of 64 black, white and colored squares was so whimsically subtle, so poised and propulsive. We drank it in greedily, we scanned every part of it, we loved it, we owned it, and, whoops, time for a test. Dr. Wolfe flashed another slide of the image, this time with one of the squares highlighted. Was the highlighted square the same color as the original, he asked the audience, or had he altered it? Um, different. No, wait, the same, definitely the same. That square could not now be nor ever have been anything but swimming-pool blue ... could it? The slides flashed by. How about this mustard square here, or that denim one there, or this pink, or that black? We in the audience were at sea and flailed for a strategy. By the end of the series only one thing was clear: We had gazed on Ellsworth Kelly’s masterpiece, but we hadn’t really seen it at all. The phenomenon that Dr. Wolfe’s Pop Art quiz exemplified is known as change blindness: the frequent inability of our visual system to detect alterations to something staring us straight in the face. The changes needn’t be as modest as a switching of paint chips. At the same meeting, held at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, the audience failed to notice entire stories disappearing from buildings, or the fact that one poor chicken in a field of dancing cartoon hens had suddenly exploded. In an interview, Dr. Wolfe also recalled a series of experiments in which pedestrians giving directions to a Cornell researcher posing as a lost tourist didn’t notice when, midway through the exchange, the sham tourist was replaced by another person altogether. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 11499 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Boston University Associate Dean for research, Salomon Amar has found that obese mice are not as effective as lean mice in mounting a counterattack against an infection. In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Amar found that the mice's inflammatory response, part of the body's defense against infection, was blunted. Amar fed mice a diet that was many times greater than they needed, and then infected both the now obese mice and a similar group of lean mice that grew up on a normal diet. Amar found that if a lean animal "Would take seven days to eliminate the microorganism…the obese animal would take about 10 days or 12 to 13 days." Amar also found that this reduced response had a second problem. Even though it the obese mice had a blunted inflammatory response, it lasted longer than necessary. He says, "You have to understand that the inflammatory response is very bad for the body when it stays longer. It's there to clean up the damages and then it needs to be removed." As examples, he notes that extended inflammation is an important problem for diabetics and that in some cases extended inflammation can result in fatal septic shock. Amar pointed out that in his experiments, he was able to take diabetes out of the equation by infecting the obese mouse before the onset of diabetes. The experiments were also specific to obesity caused by diet, and not some sort of genetic situation. © ScienCentral, 2000-2008

Keyword: Obesity; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 11498 - Posted: 06.24.2010