Jennifer Viegas -- The feather train on male peacocks is among the most striking and beautiful physical attributes in nature, but it fails to excite, much less interest, females, according to new research. The determination throws a wrench in the long-held belief that male peacock feathers evolved in response to female mate choice. It could also indicate that certain other elaborate features in galliformes, a group that includes turkeys, chickens, grouse, quails and pheasants, as well as peacocks, are not necessarily linked to fitness and mating success. For Indian peafowl, which the researchers studied, male vocalizations appear to do a better job of grabbing the attention of females than their visually screaming "attire." "We have the idea that peacock calls most influence peahens (female peacocks)," lead author Mariko Takahashi told Discovery News. Takahashi, a researcher in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo, and her colleagues studied a free-ranging population of Indian peafowl at Izu Cactus Park, Shizuoka, Japan. © 2008 Discovery Communications

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11477 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Heidi Ledford Crave sweets? Well, stop blaming your sweet tooth. Researchers have found that mice prefer sugary water even if they lack a gene needed to taste it. Although the mice could not taste sweets, reward centres in the brain reacted when the mice drank water spiked with sucrose, but not when they drank water mixed with a low-calorie artificial sweetener. The results, published this week in Neuron 1, suggest that mice can detect calories without relying on their taste buds — a finding that could change our understanding of the sugar cravings that can plague dieters and contribute to obesity. The presence of a calorie-sensing pathway makes evolutionary sense, says study author Ivan de Araujo, now at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. “The taste system evolved to allow animals to quickly detect what is worth eating versus what is not,” says de Araujo. “But the real reward that they need is not the taste itself but the calories.” Previous work has suggested that rats could also sense sugars without tasting them. Anthony Sclafani of the City University of New York and his colleagues trained rats to associate a flavour of unsweetened Kool-Aid (an artificially flavoured drink) with the infusion of either glucose or water directly into their stomachs2. If, for example, they were given grape Kool-Aid together with water, and cherry Kool-Aid together with glucose, over time the rats developed a predilection for cherry Kool-Aid when given a choice between the two. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Obesity
Link ID: 11476 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Sharon Begley My favorite story about the Dalai Lama doesn’t concern his activities on behalf of Tibet, which is one unrelieved tragedy, but is about his interest in neuroscience. A few years ago the Dalai Lama was visiting an American medical school and watched a brain operation. Afterwards, he chatted with the surgeon, telling him how his scientist friends had patiently explained to him that all of our thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams and other mental activities are the products of electrical and chemical activity in the brain. But he had always wondered something, the Dalai Lama told the surgeon. If electricity and chemistry can produce thoughts and all the rest, can thoughts act back on the physical stuff of the brain to change its chemical, electrical and other physical properties? The surgeon dismissed the question with a polite but indulgent no. (The Dalai Lama's English translator, Thupten Jinpa, told me this story in 2005.) The brain produces and shapes mental activity, the brain surgeon said; mental activity does not alter the brain. That wasn’t a stupid answer 10 years ago, before scientists had fully grasped the potential of the adult brain to change in structure and function—an ability called neuroplasticity. But now researchers have documented a long list of examples of how the brain, once thought to be basically unchangeable after the ripe old age of 3, can indeed change. © 2008 Newsweek, Inc.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 11475 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Richard Black A South American river dolphin uses branches, weeds and lumps of clay to woo the opposite sex and frighten off rivals, scientists have discovered. Researchers observed adult male botos carrying these objects while surrounded by females, and thrashing them on the water surface aggressively. Writing in the journal Biology Letters, they say such behaviour has never before been seen in any marine mammal. The boto lives in only two rivers, and numbers are thought to be declining. A group of British and Brazilian researchers studied the dolphin's unique courtship behaviour over three years in the Mamiraua Reserve, a flooded rainforest area on the Amazon. "You see them coming up with bits of wood or lumps of rock in a very ritualised manner," recalled Tony Martin from the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University. "Quite often they'd slowly come up above the surface in a vertical posture holding this stuff in their mouths, then sink down rotating on their own axis. "They would also throw it or smash it against the surface, and it does appear that the waving around and bashing is to impress the ladies; but at the same time there's a lot of aggression between adult males, and we have to infer that's part of it." Professor Martin's group established that rock carrying and branch thrashing were almost exclusively the preserve of adult males, and that they did it more when lots of adult females were present. Although the males were more aggressive towards each other at these times, they were never seen to hit each other with the rocks or plants. (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11474 - Posted: 03.26.2008

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE Degus are highly social, intelligent rodents native to the highlands of Chile. They adorn the openings of their burrows with piles of sticks and stones, have bubbly personalities and like to play games. But in a laboratory setting, degus can do much more than play hide-and-seek, according to a study in the online journal Plos One (www.plosone.org). They can learn to use tools. Specifically, degus have been trained to reach through a fence, grab hold of a tiny rake and pull their favorite food, half a peeled sunflower seed, close enough to reach with their mouths. After two months of practice, researchers say, the degus can move the rake as smoothly and efficiently as croupiers in any Las Vegas casino. This is first time rodents have been trained to wield tools, said Atshushi Iriki, a neuroscientist, who led the experiments at the Laboratory for Symbolic Cognitive Development at the Riken Institute in Tokyo. But other species may soon join them. While it has long been thought that tool use is a hallmark of higher intelligence, Dr. Iriki said, the brain structures that underlie such abilities may lie dormant in many animals with good hand-and-eye or paw-and-eye coordination. Training them to use tools in captivity provides insights into the plasticity of their brains, he said, and may shed light on how early humans evolved tool use in the first place. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 11473 - Posted: 03.26.2008

By LAURA BLUE Though most of us spend a lifetime pursuing happiness, new research is showing that that goal may be largely out of our control. Two new studies this month add to a growing body of evidence that factors like genes and age may impact our general well-being more than our best day-to-day attempts at joy. In one study, researchers at the University of Edinburgh suggest that genes account for about 50% of the variation in people's levels of happiness — the underlying determinant being genetically determined personality traits, like "being sociable, active, stable, hardworking and conscientious," says co-author Timothy Bates. What's more, says Bates, these happiness traits generally come as a package, so that if you have one you're likely to have them all. Bates and his Edinburgh colleagues drew their conclusions after looking at survey data of 973 pairs of adult twins. They found that, on average, a pair of identical twins shared more personality traits than a pair of non-identical twins. And when asked how happy they were, the identical twin pairs responded much more similarly than other twins, suggesting that both happiness and personality have a strong genetic component. The study, published in Psychological Science, went one step further: it suggested that personality and happiness do not merely coexist, but that in fact innate personality traits cause happiness. Twins who had similar scores in key traits — extroversion, calmness and conscientiousness, for example — had similar happiness scores; once those traits were accounted for, however, the similarity in twins' happiness scores disappeared. © 2008 Time Inc

Keyword: Emotions; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11472 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nikhil Swaminathan Researchers this week announced a new, faster way of imaging inside the body that could detect tumors more quickly and lead to earlier treatment. Scientists from the University of Tübingen in Germany report in this week's Nature Medicine that they were able to locate and monitor tumor growth in mice with a scanner they developed that combines positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)—and said they were optimistic it could be ready to use in humans within three years. PET technology determines how well organs and other tissue are functioning based on blood flow and the amount of nutrients, such as oxygen or glucose, that they are using. PET images help to identify an illness or injury—and the extent of a disease such as cancer. Patients are given radioactive tracers (via an IV or inhaled as a gas) that send out signals, which are picked up and deciphered by the PET scanner. MRI uses a powerful magnetic field, low intensity radio-frequency pulses, and data-processing software to create detailed images of soft tissue, muscles, nerves, fat and bones. "Combining PET and MRI shows anatomical changes by MRI and the functional information by PET," says study co-author Bernd Pichler, a radiologist at Tübingen. In the case of tumors, for instance, an MRI can find one hidden in tissue, and the PET scanner can determine whether it is malignant and growing. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 11471 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Why does anyone pay money to poison their body, risk their health, and shorten their lifespan? Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine found that while smokers' brains can recognize a losing gamble, that fails to affect their behavior. "If you're addicted to a substance then you pursue it in spite of all kinds of things that could happen in the future— in spite of negative things that could happen and in spite of positive things you might miss out on," says study leader Read Montague. “When you’re making decisions about how to behave and what to do and how to invest your time, things that might happen in the future can come to control your behavior, and can intervene on habits,” he explains. “So, for example, if you want to go to a job interview… maybe you decide to do your homework or you decide to put in a lot of extra work, and your need to eat or do something like that can be vetoed temporarily. What we found is that these fictional scenarios— scenarios about what might happen tomorrow— in normal people, people that aren’t addicted… usually come to intervene on their behavior in this way. But in smokers, these fictive signals, which we can now measure neurally in the brain, are disconnected from their ability to make choices, and they’re driven completely by their habit-chasing systems.” Montague and his team took MRI scans of chronic smokers and nonsmokers who played a fictional investing game. PUBLICATIONS: Nature Neuroscience, Advance Online Publication, March 2, 2008. © ScienCentral, 2000-2008.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 11470 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Environmental conditions may be able to rewire the brain to cause either a desire for reward or an intense fear, according to a University of Michigan study. A group of neurons in the brain's nucleus accumbens, a structure which regulates desire for reward and participates in fear, can switch between the two feelings depending on the surroundings, U-M researchers said in a press release. In rats, the front of the nucleus accumbens typically creates a desire for food, while the back of the structure generates fear, said U-M researcher Kent Berridge. When the rats were exposed to a noisy, bright environment, though, nearly the entire structure generated fear when stimulated, Berridge said. Likewise, the desire for food became strong when the rats were in a comfortable environment and nearly any part of the structure was stimulated. "The real point is that desires and fears, we experience them as totally different feelings,'' Berridge said. "But the brain seems to be saying that we can build them out of the same brain mechanism.'' © 2008 Michigan Live LLC.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 11469 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A group of scientists believe they are close to finding new treatments for multiple brain tumours. Patients with neurofibromatosis can develop up to 30 brain tumours, which although benign, can lead to deafness and eventually death. At the moment the only treatment involves invasive surgery. But a team from the South West Peninsula Medical School say they have had some success with new therapies through research of human cells. The condition, which affects one in every 2,500 people worldwide, is more common in older children and adults. By using human cells in vitro, Professor Oliver Hanemann said he and his team had been able to re-profile existing cancer drugs without the need for large toxicity studies. This has allowed them to move straight to clinical trials. "We are on the verge of working with inpatient clinics to trial our latest breakthrough, and we are investigating other therapeutic targets using other drugs," Prof Hanemann said. "Using human in vitro cell culture, which is the unique aspect of our work, allows us to move seamlessly and relatively quickly from lab-based biochemistry to drug therapies, clinical trials and hopefully successful outcomes." One of the patients taking part in the clinical trials is a 21-year-old man from Cornwall. Tom Wakenshaw from Gunnislake in Cornwall was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis after suffering from headaches at the age of 15. He has had several operations to remove tumours, which have resulted in numb fingertips and feet. He said: "I had a job as a window cleaner once, but a had an accident where a nail slipped between my toes. The worrying thing was that, even though it did not go into me, I couldn't feel it passing by my toes." (C)BBC

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 11468 - Posted: 03.25.2008

By HENRY FOUNTAIN Much has been made about the waggle dance, a fox trot of sorts that foraging honeybees do to tell their hive mates when they have found a good food source. The dance — a zigzagging figure eight maneuver performed in the hive — provides cues as to the direction and distance of the trove of flowers so the other bees can locate it. There is only one problem: Many bees seem to ignore the information. Instead, researchers in Argentina have found, the bees rely on their own memories of where to find food. In addition to its waggle moves, which provide location information, a dancing bee carries the odor of the flowers it visited. And flower scents have a known effect on bees: if the insects haven’t been foraging for a few days, the scent spurs them to resume, often at a food source they have visited before. So the question for Walter M. Farina of the University of Buenos Aires, with colleagues Christoph Grüter and M. Sol Balbuena, was what happens when the dance creates a conflict: The dancer provides information about a new location, but the flower odor reminds the watching bees about food that they remember is at another location. What do the watching bees do? In their experiments, the researchers found that in almost every case, the bees went to the familiar source. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 11467 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D. A trunk in a dusty attic holds a sleeveless peach-colored silk dress belted in creamy lace, a cane topped with a carved duck’s head, kid gloves, a riding habit, a few red leather date books and an eight-page typed essay analyzing Napoleon Bonaparte’s love life. Trunks like it usually inspire dress-up games, memory exercises and writing class assignments, not works of medical history — although that discipline could often sorely use some human interest. This particular trunk is an exception: it belonged to a delicately featured Frenchwoman who walked into Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan one day in 1932 to engage the doctors in a dialogue on paranormal communication, and was committed to psychiatric wards for much of the rest of her life. She wound up a long-term resident of Willard State Hospital, a gigantic institution in upstate New York that opened its doors to the incurable mentally ill in 1869 and closed in 1995, sending its last thousand or so patients out to smaller facilities. Left behind in an upstairs storeroom were hundreds of pieces of patients’ luggage. Curators poking through were transfixed by the power and pathos of the contents, their ordinariness a sad contrast to the tangled aberrancy of the owners’ lives. After a decade of cataloging and research, a small subset of the material became the subject of an exhibition, and now a book. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 11466 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Balter We humans can do all sorts of things other animals can't. Take language, for example--an ability researchers have long chalked up to our big and specialized brains. But size isn't everything, according to a new study, which suggests that important changes in the brain's wiring played a key role in language evolution. Back in the 19th century, neuroanatomists identified small regions of the human brain--such as Broca's area in the frontal cortex and Wernicke's area in the temporal cortex--and linked them to language. (Other, smaller-brained primates have regions that roughly correspond to these areas, but they appear to serve other functions.) More recently, scientists have found that language ability is not just isolated in discrete brain areas but requires close communication between them. For example, patients with damage to the brain's arcuate fasciculus, which consists of multiple bundles of nerve fibers that connect Broca's and Wernicke's areas, have severe difficulty speaking and understanding others. And a number of recent studies suggest that the brains of humans are wired somewhat differently than those of other primates (Science, 2 March 2007, p. 1208 ). To see whether the arcuate fasciculus had been rewired over the course of human evolution, a team led by anthropologist James Rilling of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, turned to a relatively new technique called diffusion tensor imaging. This type of MRI visualizes tissues by detecting the flow of water within them, allowing scientists to trace the long nerve fibers that connect parts of the brain. The researchers scanned the brains of 10 live human subjects as well as three deceased chimpanzees and two deceased macaque monkeys. They also looked at one live chimpanzee and one live macaque, to be sure that any differences they saw were not due to the chemicals used to preserve the dead brains. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Language; Brain imaging
Link ID: 11465 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Billy Baker In a lab at Brandeis University, Don Katz is trying to recreate spring break in rats. Or at least a particular spring break experience that, being March and all, is playing out at this very moment: college kid goes to warmer climate and drinks too much tequila; college kid gets very sick; when college kid tries to drink tequila again, his or her brain triggers a bad emotional response. This stuff, the brain says, tastes awful. Katz, an assistant professor who studies the neurobiology of taste, thinks his rats may be a little better at listening to their brain than some college kids. He'll let the rats gorge on all the sugar water they can drink, then make them feel sick to their stomach by spinning them on a turntable. When presented with sugar water again, the rats pass because they associate the taste with a bad emotion. College kids - well, they're college kids. Katz arrived in the relatively new field of taste research because he believes the way most neuroscientists study the brain is flawed. He thinks focusing on a particular part of the brain and ascribing some role to it - such as disgust - is wrong because it ignores the input of other regions of the brain. "The whole purpose of the sensory system is to interact with its environment," he said, which is why, unlike most of his peers, he chooses to study animals while they are awake and alert. "Taste is incredible in that regard. Even the simplest taste means something. It forces a reaction. You can't put something in your mouth without having an emotional response." © Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Emotions
Link ID: 11464 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Barrett and Karen Springen Snorers have always been the butt of jokes. In cartoons, their nasal roar lifts the roof off houses. In sitcoms, there's the wife who rolls her eyes at her snoring bedmate. But in reality, it's not all that funny. In fact, snoring can be a nightmare for snorers and their beleaguered partners, who may wake up several times a night to poke, prod and maybe hoist loved ones onto their sides for a little relief. It's no wonder that bleary spouses can wake up grumpy and resentful. But the nightly racket is more than a potential relationship strain. According to the latest research, an increasingly older and heavier population may make this condition an even greater a health risk than we previously thought. For Maggie Moss-Tucker, successful treatment for a longtime snoring problem came almost by accident. One fall morning in 2005, she saw a sign at her local gym seeking snorers as volunteers for a study at Boston's Brigham & Women's Hospital. Moss-Tucker, now 56, was intrigued. She had started snoring nearly a decade earlier. "I'd tried everything to stop," she says, from sleeping upright to using nose strips or a mouth guard. But to her and her husband's dismay, nothing worked. When she signed up for the study and spent a night at a suburban Boston sleep lab, she found out why. After reviewing her sleep patterns and oxygen levels, researchers told her that her snoring was actually an indication of something worse. She suffered from sleep apnea, a condition in which patients stop breathing repeatedly as they sleep and can wake up as many as 100 times a night—often without remembering it. That kind of revelation has led to doctors re-evaluating a condition once treated as little more than a nuisance. "In the past, snoring has been treated like a joking matter; you never talked about it with your doctor," says Dr. David Rapoport, medical director of the Sleep Disorders Center at New York University Medical Center. "But when it becomes very prominent or such that it wakes you up or interferes with breathing, it can be a problem." © 2008 Newsweek, Inc.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 11463 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Hyperactive young girls are more likely to have "serious" problems in adulthood, research suggests. A study of more than 800 girls up to the age of 21 found hyperactivity was linked to poor job prospects, abusive relationships and teenage pregnancy. Previous research on the lasting impact of childhood hyperactivity has focused on boys, who are more likely to be diagnosed and treated. The Canadian and UK study is reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Young girls with high levels of hyperactivity should be targeted early in life to help them achieve better at school, the researchers concluded. The study, which assessed girls yearly between the age of six and 12, looked for signs of restlessness, jumping up and down, not keeping still, and being fidgety. Researchers also assessed physical aggression such as fighting, bullying, kicking, biting or hitting. One in 10 showed high levels of hyperactive behaviour, while another one in 10 showed both high levels of hyperactive and physically aggressive behaviour. Those who were the most hyperactive or aggressive were more than twice as likely to be addicted to smoking, fall into mentally abusive relationships and four times more likely to do poorly at school. However, only girls with both hyperactivity and physical aggression were found to report later problems of physical as well as psychological aggression towards their partner, along with early pregnancy and dependency on welfare. A quarter of girls with hyperactivity had no problems in adulthood. (C)BBC

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 11462 - Posted: 03.24.2008

By Lori Aratani As New Age music fills the room, 19 men and women settle into four rows of plastic chairs. They swab their ears with alcohol towelettes and sit quietly. Slowly, another man and a woman move among the rows. With quiet precision, they insert five sharp needles into each of the people's ears. Nobody flinches when the needles hit the flesh. In fact, some of the men and women have tiny grins on their faces. This is addiction treatment, Montgomery County style. These people are participating in a pilot program that uses acupuncture, an ancient Chinese medical practice, to help treat addiction. More than a dozen people a day are volunteering to be stuck with needles as part of the county's acudetox program, which began last month and is one of a handful in the Washington region. Karlys Wright, 37, was one of the first to arrive for the early morning acudetox session. She said she almost didn't give acupuncture a try because she doesn't like needles. But in a brief time, she has become a fan of the New Age treatment. "I feel rejuvenated," the former administrative assistant from Rockville said. "I don't know how to explain it." In the fall, Montgomery County Council member Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At Large) persuaded her colleagues to spend $20,000 on a pilot program that would incorporate acupuncture into treatments for drug addiction. Acupuncture is used as a strategy to calm and relax patients before they take part in other treatments, such as group therapy. © 2008 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 11461 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MARCUS WOHLSEN SAN DIEGO -- Dr. John Kelsoe has spent his career trying to identify the biological roots of bipolar disorder. In December, he announced he had discovered several gene mutations closely tied to the disease, also known as manic depression. Then Kelsoe, a prominent psychiatric geneticist at the University of California, San Diego, did something provocative for the buttoned-down world of academic medical research: He began selling bipolar genetic tests straight to the public over the Internet last month for $399. His company, La Jolla-based Psynomics, joins a legion of startups racing to exploit the boom in research connecting genetic variations to a host of health conditions. More than 1,000 at-home gene tests have burst onto the market in the past few years. The proliferation of these tests troubles many public health officials, medical ethicists and doctors. The tests receive almost no government oversight, even though many of them are being sold as tools for making serious medical decisions. Health experts worry that many of these products are built on thin data and are preying on individuals' deepest anxieties. © 2008 The Associated Press

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 11460 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Peter Aldhous Therapeutic cloning works – in mice, at least. An international team has restored mice with a condition similar to Parkinson's disease back to health, using neurons grown in the lab that were made from their own cloned skin cells. This is the first time that a disease has been successfully treated using cloned cells that had been derived from the recipient animals. "It is the proof of concept," says Lorenz Studer of the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York, US, who led the research. But he warns that is too early to say whether the technique can be developed into a practical therapy for human patients. Studer's team first gave mice a drug to kill neurons that make the neurotransmitter dopamine. This caused movement problems similar to those seen in people with Parkinson's disease. Then the researchers took biopsies from the tails of these mice and shipped them to Teruhiko Wakayama, a specialist in cloning at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan. Wakayama's team transferred the nuclei from skin cells taken from these biopsies into mouse eggs stripped of their chromosomes, to create embryos. The Japanese researchers extracted embryonic stem (ES) cells from these cloned embryos, creating a total 187 ES cell lines from 24 mice. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 11459 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gayle Greene The first thing to go is your sense of humor. Then goes the desire to do the things you used to do, then the desire to do anything at all. Parts of your body ache that you don’t even know the names of, and your eyes forget how to focus. Words you once knew aren’t there anymore, and there’s less and less to say. People you once cared about fall by the way and you let them go, too. Gayle Greene, dozing off. (Hannah Graves)Insomnia is a problem most insomniacs don’t want to talk about. In fact, it’s a problem many of us don’t know how to talk about. “Oh, you know, a bad night,’’ I say to a colleague’s “What’s wrong?” on one of my walking-into-walls day. “Why, Gayle, what do you have to lose sleep about? You’ve got no problems,” says my colleague, eyebrows raised. If I’d been up with a bad tooth or a sick child, that’s something he would understand. If I just plain can’t sleep, that’s weird. Anyhow, chronic insomnia is not just ”a bad night.” Chronic insomnia is a bad night that goes on and on. Look on the Web, read what insomniacs say on Sleepnet.com and Talkaboutsleep.com, and you’ll find stories of lives wrecked by this affliction, marriages ruined, educations abandoned, jobs lost, careers destroyed. We reach for metaphors, analogies, figures of speech to say what it’s like. “It’s like someone opened a tap at the bottom of your body and just tapped out all the blood, and it’s just gone, there’s nothing left.” “It’s like I’m wasting away, slipping away, losin’ it.’’ Insomnia has been with us as long as we’ve had language. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs record a lament for “three living hells,’’ one of which is “to be in bed and sleep not.’’ Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 11458 - Posted: 06.24.2010