by Robert M. Sapolsky It used to be thought that humans were the only savagely violent primate. "We are the only species that kills its own," narrators intoned portentously in nature films several decades ago. That view fell by the wayside in the 1960s as it became clear that some other primates kill their fellows aplenty. Males kill; females kill. Some use their toolmaking skills to fashion bigger and better cudgels. Other primates even engage in what can only be called warfare—organized, proactive group violence directed at other populations. Yet as field studies of primates expanded, what became most striking was the variation in social practices across species. Yes, some primate species have lives filled with violence, frequent and varied. But life among others is filled with communitarianism, egalitarianism, and cooperative child rearing. Patterns emerged. In less aggressive species, such as gibbons or marmosets, groups tend to live in lush rain forests where food is plentiful and life is easy. Females and males tend to be the same size, and the males lack secondary sexual markers such as long, sharp canines or garish coloring. Couples mate for life, and males help substantially with child care. In violent species, such as baboons and rhesus monkeys, the opposite conditions prevail.

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 11156 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New research in mice has revealed that as little as a week of eating a high fat diet disrupts the body's biological, or circadian clocks, causing the animals to eat at inappropriate times. A week in the mouse lifespan equals about six months to a year for humans. Researchers led by Joe Bass showed that the fatty diet actually altered the functioning of the clock at the genetic level. "This clock, which is actually composed and encoded by a set of genes in the body, tells us when to wake up each day, it has something to do with when we go to sleep, and it also is involved in determining when it is during the day that we get hungry and how well we can metabolize the food in response to meals at different times during the day," says Bass, who is an assistant professor of Medicine and Neurobiology and Physiology at Northwestern University, as well as division head in Endocrinology at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare. Previous research by Bass, along with Fred Turek and Joseph Takahashi, and others, had already shown that mice with mutated clock genes not only experienced sleep and activity disorders, they also had an increase in susceptibility to obesity and the complications that go along with it, such as insulin resistance and cardiovascular problems. That led Bass to wonder if there was "a reciprocal relationship" -- in other words, whether diet could affect the clock. © ScienCentral, 2000-2008

Keyword: Obesity; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 11155 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By SUZANNE BOHAN SAN MATEO, Calif. | Researchers investigating the brain for genetic factors behind alcoholism discovered one more piece in the complex puzzle of the condition, according to a study published this week. Scientists with a research center run by the University of California at San Francisco found that a genetic variation, which produces lower-than-normal levels of the feel-good brain chemical dopamine, were strongly linked to impulsivity — one of the hallmarks of alcoholism. Howard Fields, a neurologist who was one of the study authors and who works at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center, focused on the biological basis of alcohol and substance abuse. The article was published Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience. “With this gene variation, you have almost double the chances of being impulsive,” Fields said. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that induces pleasurable feelings. It is sometimes called “the courier of addiction,” because many disorders, such as alcoholism and narcotics abuse, are linked to a powerful urge to create a “dopamine rush” by imbibing or injecting.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11154 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Clint Witchalls The Guardian, In a laboratory in Switzerland, a group of neuroscientists is developing a mammalian brain - in silicon. The researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in collaboration with IBM, have just completed the first phase of an ambitious project to reproduce a fully functioning brain on a supercomputer. By strange coincidence, their lab happens to lie on the same shores of Lake Geneva where Mary Shelley dreamt up her creation, Dr Frankenstein. In June 2005, Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain project, announced his intention to build a human brain using one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. "The critics were unbelievable," recalls Markram. "Everybody thought we were crazy. Even the most eminent computational neuroscientists and theoreticians said the project would fail." Some of Markram's peers said there simply wasn't enough data available to simulate a human brain. "There is no neuroscientist on the planet that has the authority to say we don't understand enough," says Markram. "We all know a tiny slice. Nobody even knows how much we know." Markram was not dissuaded by the negative reaction to his announcement. Two years on, he has already developed a computer simulation of the neocortical column - the basic building block of the neocortex, the higher functioning part of our brains - of a two-week-old rat, and it behaves exactly like its biological counterpart. It's something quite beautiful when you watch it pulse on the giant 3D screens the researchers have constructed. © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 11153 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE One morning seven years ago, Sherrilyn Roush woke to discover that the left side of her body had gone numb. The cause was obvious, according to Dr. Roush, now 42 and a philosophy professor at the University of California, Berkeley: the day before, she had been given a prescription decongestant with an ingredient suspected of causing strokes in young women. Five months later, the Food and Drug Administration took the drug off the market. But Dr. Roush, then starting her career at Rice University in Houston, did not realize that her stroke would lead to sensations that few people have ever experienced. A year and a half after the stroke, caused by a lesion the size of a lentil in a region of her midbrain, Dr. Roush began to feel tingling on her body in response to sounds. Today, more than ever, she feels sounds on her skin. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 11152 - Posted: 12.29.2007

"I couldn't live the way I was living. It was just too intense," says Nathan Klein. The married freelance television producer and father of two was 45 years old when he found out that that his tremors and loss of motor control were symptoms of Parkinson's disease. He tried various treatments and medications, including dopamine drugs. Explains Klein, "The symptoms don't get better. They get worse. And the pills you take eventually don't help out. So, you know, what's there to look forward to? Nothing." So Klein researched experimental therapies and four years ago decided to enroll in a clinical trial to assess the safety of an experimental gene therapy for Parkinson's. He became the first person in the world to undergo the procedure. Neurosurgeon Michael Kaplitt of Weill Cornell Medical Center operated on Klein. He injected viruses carrying the therapeutic genes directly into the overactive area of his brain, the subthalamic nucleus, that controls movement. Because of the experimental nature of the study, the twelve participants were only treated on one side of the brain. The study was a joint endeavor with The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Long Island. © ScienCentral, 2000-2007

Keyword: Parkinsons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11151 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By David Jay Brown The drugs that put the “psychedelic” into the sixties are now the subject of renewed research interest because of their therapeutic potential. Psychedelics such as LSD and the compound in magic mushrooms could ease a variety of difficult-to-treat mental illnesses, such as chronic depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and drug or alcohol dependency. Clinical trials with various substances are now under way in humans. The past 15 years have seen a quiet resurgence of psychedelic drug research as scientists have come to recognize the long-underappreciated potential of these drugs. In the past few years, a growing number of studies using human volunteers have begun to explore the possible therapeutic benefits of drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, ibogaine and ketamine. Much remains unclear about the precise neural mechanisms governing how these drugs produce their mind-bending results, but they often produce somewhat similar psychoactive effects that make them potential therapeutic tools. Though still in their preliminary stages, studies in humans suggest that the day when people can schedule a psychedelic session with their therapist to overcome a serious psychiatric problem may not be that far off. © 1996-2007 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Depression
Link ID: 11150 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas Yoo-Hoo! -- When Elvis shook his hips, girls went wild, and so it is that the sight of a male fiddler crab waving its single giant claw can send female crabs into a sexy swoon, according to a new study. The study is one of the first to show that receiver distance affects visual signals in non-human animals: the males wave differently, depending on how close or how far away the female onlooker is. People do this all of the time, such as when someone is trying to catch the attention of a loved one at an airport and jumps up and down while waving to do so. If the intended recipient of the signal is nearby, the person jumping up and down and waving would waste energy and look rather stupid. Crabs too change their tactics, which also alters the meaning of the signals. "I think that the long-range claw-waving signal is essentially saying, 'I'm a male Uca perplexa and I'm over here!,'" said Martin How, lead author of the study. "It acts as a beacon towards which receptive females can move." How, a researcher in the Center for Visual Sciences at The Australian National University in Canberra, thinks the short-range claw waving display is different. © 2007 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11149 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Proposed electronic tagging of dementia sufferers, with their agreement, has been backed by the Alzheimer's Society. The charity said the plan could empower patients by allowing them to wander, but called for a debate on the ethics of gaining consent. Many dementia sufferers feel compelled to walk about outside - the society says 60% may wander, and 40% have got lost at some point. The government has said tagging could allow people to lead "fuller lives". Science Minister Malcolm Wicks first proposed the measure in April. He said sufferers would gain the freedom to "roam around their communities" without their families suffering the anxiety that such wandering can currently cause. The chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society, Neil Hunt, agrees that the technology "could offer benefits to people with dementia and their carers". But he stressed: "There is a careful balance to strike between empowering people and restricting their movement and this technology can certainly never be used as an alternative for high quality dementia care." Dr Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, said the scheme had potential pitfalls. He told BBC Radio 5 Live: "The problem with this is that you could see second-class care - using it as a way of making life easier for carers rather than as a way of making life safer or more pleasant for the person with Alzheimer's." (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 11148 - Posted: 12.27.2007

Scientists may be a step closer to uncovering the cause of certain types of debilitating migraine headaches. A French team observed activation in the hypothalamus region of the brain as sufferers had a migraine attack. The hypothalamus has long been suspected as it regulates physiological responses to factors known to trigger headaches, such as hunger. It is hoped the discovery, featured in the journal Headache, could lead to new treatments. The researchers, from Rangueil Hospital, used a technique called Positron Emission Tomography (PET), which contrasts functional activity within the brain, on seven patients with migraine without aura, the most common type of migraine. Previously, activation in the brain stem and midbrain, and a thickening in some areas of the cortex were seen in migraine sufferers. The present study may have seen a more detailed pathogenesis of the condition for two reasons. First, timing was crucial: to capture an attack as it happened, patients rushed to hospital without self-medicating, arriving on average around three hours after the onset of the migraine. Second, the observed headaches were spontaneous, and not chemically induced as in other laboratory studies. (C)BBC

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 11147 - Posted: 12.27.2007

By DENISE GRADY Researchers in the Netherlands have developed a drug that may eventually be used to treat children with a severe and fatal type of muscular dystrophy. Times Health Guide: Duchenne’s Muscular DystrophyIn its first test in humans, a safety study in just four boys, the drug enabled patients to produce an essential muscle protein that is missing in Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy, a genetic disease. Not enough of the protein was produced to help the boys, but the presence of any at all was considered “proof of concept,” meaning that the approach has the potential to work and is worth pursuing. The experimental drug, called an “antisense” compound, works by canceling out the effects of certain genetic mutations. These types of drugs are being studied to treat cancer, heart disease, infections and other illnesses. “I don’t think you could ask for a better result from a preliminary study like this,” said Sharon Hesterlee, the vice president for translational research at the Muscular Dystrophy Association, which was not involved in the study but helped pay for an earlier phase of the work. Though promising, the research still has a long way to go. The four boys, ages 10 to 13, each received just one injection into a leg muscle. There were no adverse effects. But larger and longer trials with much higher doses, given systemically so that the drug reaches all muscles, are needed to test both safety and efficacy. If the treatment works, it will have to be given regularly, for life. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Muscles
Link ID: 11146 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by David Dobbs We did not, alas, make it to the Prague Museum, which is pictured above. But with the end of both the calendar year and Mind Matters' first year it seems a good time to look a back and see where we have been since launching in January. Looking back requires memory, and by chance that's where we started, with a post by memory researcher James Knierim reviewing what likely will prove the most influential single discovery we covered, that of grid cells in the mouse entorhinal cortex -- a system of neurons that appear to help track location and create context for memories. That discovery, wrote James Knierim, is one of the most remarkable findings in the history of single-unit recordings of brain activity.... [When I read it,] I realized immediately that I was reading a work of historic importance in neuroscience. No one had ever reported a neural response property that was so geometrically regular, so crystalline, so perfect. How could this even be possible? Yet the data were convincing. "This changes everything," I muttered. Another memory post, concerning whether patients with amnesia have trouble imagining new experiences, produced what was perhaps the most substantive debate we had between a reviewer (Andre Fenton) and the an author of the paper reviewed (Demis Hassibis). We also covered memory with reviews of papers on memories are suppressed and how memories are lost in Alzheimer's. Remembering something means learning it in the first place, of course, and we looked at that as well, examining how humans learn through second-hand experience, which appears to be one of humankind's stronger innovations. © 1995-2007 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 11145 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new study of combat-exposed Vietnam War veterans shows that those with injuries to certain parts of the brain were less likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The findings, from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Naval Medical Center, suggest that drugs or pacemaker-like devices aimed at dampening activity in these brain regions might be effective treatments for PTSD. PTSD involves the persistent reliving of a traumatic experience through nightmares and flashbacks that may seem real. Twenty percent to 30 percent of Vietnam vets (more than 1 million) have been diagnosed with PTSD, and a similar rate has been reported among Hurricane Katrina survivors in New Orleans. Public health officials are currently tracking the disorder among soldiers returning from Iraq. Yet, while war and natural disasters tend to call the greatest attention to PTSD, it's estimated that millions of Americans suffer from it as a result of assault, rape, child abuse, car accidents, and other traumatic events. Previous studies have shown that PTSD is associated with changes in brain activity, but those studies couldn't determine whether the changes were contributing to the disorder or merely occurring because of it. "If we could show that lesions in a specific brain region eliminated PTSD, we knew we could say that the region is critical to developing the disorder," says Dr. Grafman. The results of his study appear online today in Nature Neuroscience.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 11144 - Posted: 12.27.2007

Charles Lewis, National Post Whether it is a child's belief in Santa or a religious belief in the incredible miracle story, belief looms large at this time of year. Religion is the starting point, but this five-part series explores the many facets of belief, from the placebo effect to the neuroscience of belief and disbelief. Today, atheists on belief and disbelief. Sam Harris may be the best-selling author of two books on the destructiveness of religion, but he has not given up on belief. Now a doctoral candidate in neuroscience at the University of California at Los Angeles, Mr. Harris and his colleagues have just published research that, they believe, maps for the first time where in the brain decisions are made about what we believe and do not believe. Mr. Harris said he wanted to understand the biological process that allows people to accept certain descriptions of reality as valid. Test subjects were scanned with an MRI while being asked to decide whether they believed the veracity of a particular statement. The researchers then looked for which parts of the brain "lit up." They discovered the part of the brain used for lower cognitive functions -- such as deciding whether something smells good or bad, or assessing pain -- is also used to decide whether a proposition is true or false. © 2007 CanWest Interactive

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 11143 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DENISE GRADY For a perfectly healthy woman, Dianne Kerley has had quite a few medical tests in recent years: M.R.I. and PET scans of her brain, two spinal taps and hours of memory and thinking tests. Ms. Kerley, 52, has spent much of her life in the shadow of an illness that gradually destroys memory, personality and the ability to think, speak and live independently. Her mother, grandmother and a maternal great-aunt all developed Alzheimer’s disease. Her mother, 78, is in a nursing home in the advanced stages of dementia, helpless and barely responsive. “She’s in her own private purgatory,” Ms. Kerley said. Ms. Kerley is part of an ambitious new scientific effort to find ways to detect Alzheimer’s disease at the earliest possible moment. Although the disease may seem like a calamity that strikes suddenly in old age, scientists now think it begins long before the mind fails. “Alzheimer’s disease may be a chronic condition in which changes begin in midlife or even earlier,” said Dr. John C. Morris, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Washington University in St. Louis, where Ms. Kerley volunteers for studies. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 11142 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY A region deep in the brain called the hippocampus tracks, sorts and stores the onslaught of information pouring through the senses every waking minute. A large question in neuroscience is one a kindergartner would ask: How? How does a dollop of tissue containing a small fraction of the brain’s neurons possibly absorb and hold so much, even temporarily? A study published last week in the journal Nature provides the first step toward an answer, as well as a showcase for some of the most advanced methods available to study the brain. Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland stimulated not a single cell but a single dendritic spine, one of the hairlike growths that sprout from a cell’s branching arms. Brain cells communicate with their neighbors by sending a chemical burst from the tips of these spines, across a space called the synapse to the tip of a spine on the next cell. If the chemical bath is strong enough, the receiving spine bulges forward — strengthening the connection between the spines. This is thought to be the fundamental process underlying learning. But the researchers, Christopher D. Harvey and Karel Svoboda, found something unusual when they stimulated a single spine. Not only did the spine bulge, but it also somehow made its neighbors more sensitive to chemical signals — standing ready, in effect, to digest any spillover of information. Imagine every neighbor on the block calling up to offer a corner of his basement for storage, just in case. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 11141 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Douglas LaBier You may not realize it, but a great number of people suffer from EDD. No, you're not reading a misprint of ADD or ED. The acronym stands for empathy deficit disorder. Nor will you find it listed in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, even though that tome has been expanding as normal variations of mood and temperament have increasingly been defined as disorders. I'm hesitant to suggest adding another one. But this one is real. Based on my 35 years of experience as a psychotherapist, business psychologist and researcher, I have come to believe that EDD is a pervasive but overlooked condition with profound consequences for the mental health of individuals and of our society. People who suffer from EDD are unable to step outside themselves and tune in to what other people experience. That makes it a source of personal conflicts, of communication failure in intimate relationships, and of the adversarial attitudes -- even hatred -- among groups of people who differ in their beliefs, traditions or ways of life. Take the man who reported to me that his wife was complaining that he didn't spend enough time with their children, that she had most of the burden despite having a career of her own. © 2007 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 11140 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER I am a baseball fan of the most fitful and narrow-minded sort. I love the Yankees, but really only when they’re winning, I hate the Red Sox, especially when they’re winning, and the other teams, as far as I’m concerned, can all go take a whiff. Nevertheless, I care enough about the future of America’s beloved pastime to offer players who have been accused of using anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and other disreputable performance-enhancing drugs some exciting new excuses, culled from the behavioral and pharmaceutical annals of the nonhuman community. Among them: (a) this stuff isn’t for me, it’s for my wife, and any minute now I’ll explode out the contents of my stomach to give it to her; (b) this stuff isn’t mine, it belongs to the poor slob I pretended to befriend and then killed and ate; and (c) don’t blame me — my first dope pusher was my mother. Frown though we may on steroid-style supplementation as cheating, or as competitiveness taken to unsporting and unnatural extremes, in nature such pious niceties do not apply. In nature, as the saying has it, it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s whether you win — and animals will do or ingest the most outrageous, dangerous, blechy things in their quest for victory. Egyptian vultures consume large amounts of cow and goat dung to extract traces of plant pigments that will turn the birds’ pasty faces a sexually alluring shade of mustard. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11139 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Karen Collins, R.D. Is fat the new normal? A study published in the July issue of Economic Inquiry raises that question. With roughly two-thirds of the American population overweight or obese, have our cultural ideals of what we consider “normal weight” changed? The study looked at economic and social factors affecting obesity rates. One element explored was the impact of societal norms or standards. According to the study’s authors, standards for acceptable body weight relax as the average weight of the population increases; in turn, people’s weights continue to rise in response to the lessening of social standards. Public response to the study ranges from support to outrage. While some recognize the danger of “normalizing” unhealthy weights, others are angered by the insinuation that people are unable to differentiate between “average” and “healthy.” This discussion echoes the misunderstanding that surrounded research published in 2000. One study, which was published in the journal Obesity Research, focused on body-size acceptance. In the study, subjects were presented with nine line drawings portraying various body shapes that ranged from very thin to obese. Participants were asked to identify those body sizes that “looked okay” as well as the one they “liked best.” © 2007 MSNBC Interactive

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 11138 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WILTON, Conn. - When Sister Kathleen Treanor's soul ascends to heaven, her brain will go to a less ethereal realm: a medical lab in Kentucky. Two decades ago, Sister Treanor and 677 other members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame granted a young researcher's request to test them each year in order to track the progression of Alzheimer's disease and other age-related brain disorders. The 61 surviving nuns recently completed their last round of intellectual and physical tests for the Nun Study, one of the world's most comprehensive neurological research projects. One final sacrifice remains: When they die, their brains will be taken for further study, joining a collection of hundreds of other brains donated by the the nuns who died before them. Sister Treanor, a 93-year-old former school principal who is one of the last of the volunteers at a Wilton convent, looks at her participation as service, not sacrifice. "I've tried to do good while I'm alive, and I liked the idea that I could do something good after death," she said. Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 11137 - Posted: 12.24.2007