By JOANNE KAUFMAN We have your son. We will make sure he will no longer be able to care for himself or interact socially as long as he lives. SO reads one of the six “ransom notes” that make up a provocative public service campaign introduced this week by the New York University Child Study Center to raise awareness of what Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz, the center’s founder and director, called “the silent public health epidemic of children’s mental illness.” Produced pro bono by BBDO, an Omnicom agency that worked on two previous campaigns for the Child Study Center, the campaign features scrawled and typed communiqués as well as simulations of classic ransom notes, composed of words clipped from a newspaper. In addition to autism, there are ominous threats concerning depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Asperger’s syndrome and bulimia. The campaign’s overarching theme is that 12 million children “are held hostage by a psychiatric disorder.” The public service announcements began running this week in New York magazine and Newsweek as well as on kiosks, billboards and construction sites around New York City. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Autism
Link ID: 11096 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANDREW POLLACK The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the first drug to treat a rare genetic disorder that can lead to mental retardation, possibly allowing some people to relax a regimented diet now used to control the disease. All babies born in the United States are screened for the disease, called phenylketonuria, or PKU. To avoid damage to the brain, people with the disease must adhere to a strict low-protein diet, particularly in childhood but also later in life. The new drug, called Kuvan, “will be life-changing for some patients,” said Dr. Stephen D. Cederbaum, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is an adviser to BioMarin Pharmaceutical, the company that developed the drug. Dr. Cederbaum said that one of his patients, a 25-year-old man who began taking Kuvan as part of a clinical trial, was able to get his first taste of cheese and pizza and to eat enough other foods that “for the first time in his life, he’s not hungry.” But Dr. Cederbaum said there was also some resistance to the drug because of its price, especially since some patients would get little or no benefit. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Intelligence
Link ID: 11095 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gloria Troyer The human balance system is sometimes referred to as the sixth sense. Many people don't give it a second thought, but without our sense of balance it becomes difficult to get around, live independently and carry on with simple daily activities. Balance disorders can have a serious impact, particularly on an older person's life. They are one of the reasons that older people have falls, for example, which can result in serious injuries such as broken bones. Approximately nine per cent of those aged 65 or older will require medical attention for an injury related to a fall at some point in their senior years, according to statistics gathered by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders in the United States. Having good balance means that one is able to control and maintain their position whether moving or still, and while moving over various types of terrain. It sounds simple, but it's actually a rather complex feat. Balance relies on a combination of several factors. The inner ear, eyes, muscles and joints need to work together to transmit reliable information to the brain, helping it co-ordinate the body's movement and orientation in space. © CBC 2007

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 11094 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In the fishbowl version of a pickup joint, the mere sight of a well-endowed male swordtail causes genes to switch off in the female's brain. The result: She throws caution to the wind to win the hunky mate. Female swordtails are attracted to large males adorned with body ornaments, such as long tails and striking coloration. In a series of fish-tank experiments, researchers showed that when a swell swordtail catch is around, certain of the female genes linked with sexual behaviors were in a sense modified. The gene changes occurred in just 30 minutes, quick enough so the preferred male could bait the female with body ornaments and size before reeling her in. The phenomenon, detailed in the Dec. 4 online version of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, suggests a suite of genes that under normal circumstances keep female swordtails from mating can be switched off when preferred males are nearby. "When females were most excited — when attractive males were around — we observed the greatest down regulation [turning off] of genes," said Molly Cummings of the University of Texas at Austin. "It's possible that this could lead to a release of inhibition, a transition to being receptive to mating." © 2007 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 11093 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER Every year, the average American adult drinks the equivalent of 38 six-packs of beer, a dozen bottles of wine and two quarts of distilled spirits like gin, rum, single malt Scotch, or vodka that aspires to single malt status through the addition of flavors normally associated with yogurt or bubble bath. We are by no means the most bibulous people: according to the World Health Organization, 39 other nations outdrink us, a list topped by Luxembourg, where residents manage to ingest roughly 284 bottles of beer and 88 bottles of wine annually, no doubt to salve the indignation of explaining that their country isn’t part of Belgium. Yet even though we Americans drink less than some others, we can hold our own, especially now that the peak ethanol season is under way. Liquor sales in December, according to hospitality trade groups, are usually a good 50 percent higher than in other months, and that’s hardly a surprise. December is a time of multicreedal spirituality and festivities, and alcohol has been a fixture of celebration and religious ritual since humans first learned to play and pray. December is also cold, dark and miserable, a meteorological migraine begging for home remediation, and alcohol is perhaps humanity’s oldest medicine. Moreover, December is a time for family, and a taste for alcohol, it seems, is all in the family, the extended phylogenetic family of primates and other animals that make fruit a centerpiece of their diet. Nothing broadcasts the presence of ripe, digestible fruit as effectively as the aroma of fermentation. We’re frugivores at our core. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 11092 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Kaori Hitomi, Associated Press -- Cat and mouse may never be the same. Japanese scientists say they've used genetic engineering to create mice that show no fear of felines, a development that may shed new light on mammal behavior and the nature of fear itself. Scientists at Tokyo University say they were able to successfully switch off a mouse's instinct to cower at the smell or presence of cats -- showing that fear is genetically hardwired and not learned through experience, as commonly believed. "Mice are naturally terrified of cats, and usually panic or flee at the smell of one. But mice with certain nasal cells removed through genetic engineering didn't display any fear," said research team leader Ko Kobayakawa. In his experiment, the genetically altered mice approached cats, even snuggled up to them and played with them. Kobayakawa said he chose domesticated cats that were docile and thus less likely to pounce. Kobayakawa said his findings, published in the science magazine Nature last month, should help researchers shed further light on how the brain processes information about the outside world. © 2007 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Emotions; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11091 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Mitch Leslie Apes can wield tools, learn sign language, and get hooked on TV. New research credits them with yet another ability once thought to be exclusively human: duplicating the facial expressions of others. The work suggests that this capability, which might help individuals synchronize their emotions, precedes the origin of our species. Whether we're watching a movie or having coffee with an old friend, often we rapidly and unconsciously mirror the facial expressions of people we are looking at. Smiles, laughs, and grimaces of disgust are contagious. Why we're such copycats isn't clear. Youngsters might be learning the right moves for communication. Facial mimicry may also aid interpretation: To understand an expression, the brain recreates it. Some researchers think that emulating an expression might elicit the same feelings in the viewer, creating empathy. To determine whether the ability extends to apes, behavioral biologist Marina Davila Ross and colleagues at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover in Germany videotaped pairs of young orangutans at play. They analyzed instances in which one of the playmates produced a neutral expression or a so-called open-mouth face (see video), which might be equivalent to the human smile. As the team reports this week in Biology Letters, if an orangutan showed the open-mouth face, its partner was likely to follow suit in less than half a second. When the researchers broke down the interactions by age, they found that mimicry was more common among juveniles and adolescents and when the two playmates were more than 2 years apart in age. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 11090 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nikhil Swaminathan A successful treatment for Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects 1 percent of the world's population and (an estimated 500,000 people in the U.S.) aged 60 years and over, may be "in our sights now," says Ronald McKay, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). McKay's optimism stems from new research that shows that a gene, known as forkhead box A2 (FOXA2), is responsible for the differentiation and spontaneous destruction of neurons that secrete the neurotransmitter dopamine, a cell population that is progressively lost in Parkinson's disease, which is characterized by tremors, loss of muscle control and speech difficulties. "We have the cells; we know what controls their birth and death—we're on our way," says McKay, a senior molecular biology investigator. "It looks like we've got this disease in our sights now. We will understand Parkinson's disease relatively soon." McKay and colleagues (at the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md., and at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago) report in the journal PLoS Biology that they tested candidate cells in the brain of embryonic mice to determine which ones produce the enzyme tyrosine hydroxylase, a compound manufactured by dopamine neurons to help convert amino acids into precursors of the neurotransmitter. © 1996-2007 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 11089 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers say they have identified the chemical switch that controls the genetic mechanism regulating people's internal body clocks. Although the process involves complex genes, the whole mechanism is controlled by a single amino acid - a building block of protein - they say. It is hoped the discovery may lead to more effective drugs to treat sleep disorders and related ailments. The University of California study appears in the journal Nature. Lead researcher Professor Paolo Sassone-Corsi said: "Because the triggering action is so specific, it appears to be a perfect target for compounds that could regulate this activity. "It is always amazing to see how molecular control is so precise in biology." The body's internal clock, a highly sensitive mechanism able to anticipate changes in the environment, regulates a host of body functions, from sleep patterns to metabolism and behaviour. It is estimated that it regulates up to 15% of all human genes. Disruption of these rhythms can profoundly influence human health and has been linked to insomnia, depression, heart disease, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. The gene CLOCK and its partner BMAL1 control the body's internal clock.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 11088 - Posted: 12.13.2007

CBC News Patients who have had strokes and are taking Lipitor (atorvastatin) to lower their cholesterol may be at increased risk of a brain hemorrhage, a new study finds. However, researchers caution that the medication's value — its prevention of ischemic strokes — needs to be weighed against the risk. A brain hemorrhage, or hemorrhagic stroke, involves the rupture of weakened blood vessels in the brain, leading to rapid bleeding. An ischemic stroke is caused by an obstruction within a blood vessel supplying blood to the brain. "The risk of hemorrhage in patients who have had a transient ischemic attack or stroke must be balanced against the benefits of cholesterol-lowering drugs in reducing the overall risk of a second stroke, as well as other cardiovascular events," said study author Larry Goldstein, with Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., in a release. The study was a secondary analysis of a double-blind, randomized clinical trial funded by Pfizer, the company that makes Lipitor. Participants were enrolled between September 1998 and March 2001and followed for an average of 4.5 years. © CBC 2007

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 11087 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jane E. Brody My husband, at 74, is the baby of his bridge group, which includes a woman of 85 and a man of 89. This challenging game demands an excellent memory (for bids, cards played, rules and so on) and an ability to think strategically and read subtle psychological cues. Never having had a head for cards, I continue to be amazed by the mental agility of these septua- and octogenarians. The brain, like every other part of the body, changes with age, and those changes can impede clear thinking and memory. Yet many older people seem to remain sharp as a tack well into their 80s and beyond. Although their pace may have slowed, they continue to work, travel, attend plays and concerts, play cards and board games, study foreign languages, design buildings, work with computers, write books, do puzzles, knit or perform other mentally challenging tasks that can befuddle people much younger. But when these sharp old folks die, autopsy studies often reveal extensive brain abnormalities like those in patients with Alzheimer's. Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas and Yaakov Stern at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center recall that in 1988, a study of "cognitively normal elderly women" showed that they had "advanced Alzheimer's disease pathology in their brains at death." Later studies indicated that up to two-thirds of people with autopsy findings of Alzheimer's disease were cognitively intact when they died. © 2007 the International Herald Tribune

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 11086 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Steve Mitchell The recent breakthrough of skin cells reprogrammed to behave like embryonic stem cells has stolen the spotlight (ScienceNOW, 6 December), but adult stem cells are proving that they have advantages of their own. In the 13 December issue of Cell Stem Cell, researchers report using stem cells from patients afflicted with a form of muscular dystrophy to correct the disorder in mice. The results suggest that this strategy could one day treat muscular dystrophy in humans as well as other genetic disorders. Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which predominantly strikes boys, is caused by a mutation in the gene for a protein called dystrophin that is essential for proper muscle function. The condition leads to muscle degeneration, and patients usually die in their 30s. A particular type of stem cell found in muscle can give rise to new muscle tissue, so a team led by geneticist Luis Garcia of Généthon, a nonprofit biotechnology firm in Évry, France, investigated whether these cells could be used to reverse the dystrophin problems. The researchers first obtained the stem cells from patients via a muscle biopsy. Next, they used a virus to insert a gene into the cells that corrects the mutation in the dystrophin gene. The researchers then injected the modified stem cells into arteries of the legs of mice with muscular dystrophy. In just 3 weeks, muscles in the foot, shin, and thigh began expressing human dystrophin protein, indicating that the stem cells had given rise to muscle cells that had taken up residence in the muscles of the mice. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Muscles; Stem Cells
Link ID: 11085 - Posted: 06.24.2010

You're running late, stuck in traffic, or pushing a deadline. The day seems a bit more out of control than usual and, bam, you've driven past your freeway exit. Whether it's something like this, or drawing a blank during a big meeting, or getting into a fender-bender on the way to a parent-teacher conference, we all have had moments where life's little pressures ganged up on us and we, somehow, made the problem worse by forgetting something or overlooking a significant detail. Scientists have known that stress can impact your memory. What they're beginning to understand now is the changes your brain undergoes because of stress. Jeansok Kim an associate professor at the University of Washington's psychology department, studies memory by using mice. He's found a way to measure activity inside the brain's hippocampus. He says, "Think of it as putting a miniature microphone into the hippocampus and as the animal is navigating, you are listening to the cells." What he's hearing is the cells firing as a mouse moves from one location to another. When a mouse is a new location, various cells in the hippocampus fire, creating a memory of that spot. When the mouse returns to that location, the same cells fire. Scientists often test how well a mouse thinks by putting them in a pool of water. Mice are good but reluctant swimmers and soon locate a platform hidden out of sight, just beneath the water's surface. In later tests, they could easily remember where the platform was and quickly swim to it. © ScienCentral, 2000-2007.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Stress
Link ID: 11084 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A wearable digital camera may hold the key to helping people who have memory problems, experts believe. Sensecam, produced by Microsoft, takes photos of daily events every 30 seconds so they can be played back later at high-speed to jog memory. Trials showed it helped people recall the event and emotions related to it. Experts believe it could help people with general memory loss and more serious conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, but they say it is early days. Universities in the US and UK are currently testing the device. The camera, which can fit in the palm of a hand, can store up to 30,000 images - enough for a fortnight's use. It has been tested on a 63-year-old woman with memory loss caused by a brain infection. She spent about an hour every two days reviewing the images for a two-week period. Without any other memory aids, she typically forgot everything within five days. But during the test her memory steadily increased and after two weeks she could recall about 90% of the events she experienced. Researchers are now testing the device on healthy elderly people who would typically struggle to recall memories as a result of ageing as well as patients with Alzheimer's. (C)BBC

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 11083 - Posted: 12.12.2007

NEW YORK - The effects of a methamphetamine overdose are very similar to those seen after a traumatic brain injury, according to researchers who examined the effects of "club drugs" in rats. "We showed that a single overdose of meth can be as damaging as a head-on motor vehicle collision in the brain," co-author Matthew Warren, of the University of Florida in Gainesville, told Reuters Health. Methamphetamine is a highly addictive stimulant that is chemically related to amphetamine, but is more potent and more harmful to the central nervous system. Warren and his associates analyzed changes in the proteins in rodents' brains after traumatic injury and decided to investigate whether methamphetamine and MDMA, also known as Ecstasy, might cause similar changes. MDMA is a psychoactive drug that is chemically similar to methamphetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline. The results of animal studies have also shown it has toxic effects on the nervous system. (c) Reuters 2007

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 11082 - Posted: 12.12.2007

By John Tierney What if you could take a drug that would quickly alter your sexual orientation from straight to gay, or vice versa? To their surprise, neurobiologists have discovered that homosexuality can be turned on or off in fruit flies. They’d known that sexual orientation can be genetically programmed, but they didn’t realize it could also be altered by giving a drug that changes the way the flies’ sensory circuits react to pheromones. Within hours of the treatment, previously heterosexual male fruit flies would be courting other males, and treatment could also cause flies who had been engaging in homosexual behavior to become exclusively heterosexual, the neurobiologists report in Nature Neuroscience. You can read a summary of it here from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the home of one of the researchers, David Featherstone. “It was amazing,” Dr. Featherstone said. “I never thought we’d be able to do that sort of thing, because sexual orientation is supposed to be hard-wired. This fundamentally changes how we think about this behavior.” I asked Dr. Featherstone if it might be possible one day to quickly alter humans’ sexual orientation. Here’s his answer: Although I am not sure my research is a big step in this direction, I think that ultimately the answer will be: Yes. After all, the goal of neuroscience is a complete understanding of brain function. Understanding in science is typically demonstrated by the ability to control a process. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11081 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Daniel Engber Last month, the New York Times foolishly gave space on its op-ed page to a team of self-promoting brain researchers and political consultants who claimed they could use functional magnetic resonance imaging to read the minds of American swing voters. The flaws in their study were numerous and egregious (as I explained here), and three days later, the newspaper published a stern rebuke signed by 17 prominent cognitive neurobiologists: "We are distressed," they wrote, "by the publication of research in the press that has not undergone peer review, and that uses flawed reasoning to draw unfounded conclusions about topics as important as the presidential election." Consider that lesson unlearned: On Wednesday, a second piece of spurious, brain-based punditry made its way into the opinion pages of a major newspaper. This time it's an essay in the Los Angeles Times from psychiatrist and self-help guru Daniel G. Amen, a medical maverick who runs a chain of private brain-scanning facilities across the country. Amen doesn't want to read the minds of swing voters; he wants to study the candidates themselves. Why? Because the leading candidates appear to be messed up in the head. "Underlying brain dysfunction" might explain Rudy Giuliani's marital failings, he says, or John McCain's temper, or Hillary Clinton's inability to seem authentic. After all, three of the last four presidents "have shown clear brain pathology": Reagan's forgetfulness was a symptom of his Alzheimer's, Clinton's escapades were a product of prefrontal damage, and George W. Bush's linguistic gaffes reflect some form of temporal lobe impairment. 2007 Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 11080 - Posted: 12.12.2007

By DAN HURLEY Among the growing numbers of researchers and public health officials advocating a daring new strategy to put an injectable antidote for heroin overdoses directly into the hands of addicts, few have the credibility of Mark Kinzly. After 11 years as an addict, Mr. Kinzly cleaned up, began working with needle exchange programs and became a research associate at the Yale School of Public Health. Then came the relapse and the overdose that nearly killed him. “We were watching TV — I think it was the Red Sox beating the Yankees,” Mr. Kinzly, 47, recalled of the evening in 2005 when he passed out in a colleague’s apartment. “Because of our work he knew what to do. He dialed 911 and then injected the naloxone.” Taken in high enough doses, heroin and other opioids suppress the brain’s regulation of breathing and other life-sustaining functions. Naloxone is a chemical that blocks the brain-cell receptors otherwise activated by heroin, acting in minutes to restore normal breathing. Since its approval by the Food and Drug Administration in 1971, naloxone has become a standard treatment for overdoses, used almost exclusively by emergency medical workers. But it has lately become a tool for state and cities struggling to reduce stubbornly high death rates among opiate users. By distributing the drug and syringes to addicts and training them and their partners in preventing, recognizing and treating overdoses, the programs take credit for reversing more than 1,000 overdoses. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 11079 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By HARRIET BROWN We stood in front of the freezer case at the grocery store, my 16-year-old daughter, Kitty, and I. It was late, and I was tired, but we had come out for a few items that couldn’t wait until morning. One of them was ice cream. “How about this vanilla?” I asked, rubbing away condensation on the freezer door to peer at a label. Then I shook my head and said: “Never mind. It’s 140 calories a half-cup.” I opened the door, rummaged and pulled out a different pint of vanilla. That one was also 140 calories. Not good enough. Meanwhile, my daughter was a few cases away, holding up a pint of coffee ice cream. Together we read the back of the carton and rejected it. A pint of caramel cappuccino swirl was an improvement, but I thought we could do better. And I was right. We took home three pints of Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream, with 270 calories in every half-cup. Like many Americans, I can be obsessive about reading food labels. Only I’m looking for more calories, not fewer, because my daughter Kitty is in recovery from anorexia. Her weight has been restored for more than a year, and in many ways she is as normal as a teenager gets. But when it comes to eating, she still has to pay attention in a different way. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 11078 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have created an "autistic mouse" after replacing a normal gene in its body with a mutated one. They hope the mouse will yield clues about autism, a neuropsychiatric disorder in which those affected experience social, communication and sometimes cognitive deficits. Many perform repetitive motions, and some variants of the disorder are accompanied by a heightened spatial ability and high intellect. "With this research, we can study changes in the brain that lead to autistic behaviours and symptoms, which may help us understand more about progression and treatment of the disorder," study author Craig Powell, assistant professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said in a release. Researchers replaced a normal gene called neurologin-3 with a mutated neurologin-3 gene, which is associated with autism. The modified mouse showed autistic symptoms similar to those in people with the condition, according to the authors. It displayed decreased social interaction with other mice, anxiety, poorer co-ordination and pain sensitivity. It also showed advanced spatial learning abilities. The scientists plan to test drug therapies on mouse models to improve social interaction deficits. © CBC 2007

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 11077 - Posted: 06.24.2010