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

Adding antibiotics to standard drug therapy may slow down the progress of multiple sclerosis, research suggests. Patients showed fewer symptoms, and fewer signs of tissue damage when they took the antibiotic doxycycline alongside the MS drug beta interferon. Louisiana State University researchers believe the antibiotic may block the action of enzyme that destroy certain cells in the nervous system. Archives of Neurology reports the study involving 15 patients on its website. However, UK experts warned the study was small, and no comparison was made with patients who did not take doxycycline. The 15 patients who took part in the study all had relapsing-remitting MS - the most common form of the disease. Typically, this causes attacks of symptoms such as muscle weakness and spasms, followed by periods of remission. The attacks result from damage inflicted on the body by its own immune system, which turns in on itself, attacking the nervous tissue. It is thought that these attacks may be triggered by an inappropriate response to viral or bacterial infections, or another potentially disease-causing agent. They are certainly very unpredictable, and symptoms come and go, often seemingly randomly. Many patients with relapsing-remitting MS take the drug interferon, which helps to suppress the immune system, and keep it working more normally. However, they are still prone to attacks which cause damage to the tissue of the brain. The study focused on patients who had been taking interferon for at least six months, and who were still experiencing symptoms, and developing new tissue damage in the brain. For four months the patients took 100mg a day of doxycycline alongside their regular dose of interferon. At the end of this period brain scans revealed that brain tissue damage was reduced by at least 25% in nine of the patients. (C)BBC

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 11076 - Posted: 12.11.2007

By MELISSA LAFSKY The most horrifying moment in the new movie “Awake” occurs 34 minutes into the film, when the protagonist (Hayden Christensen) feels the scalpel cutting into his chest. As his surgeon (Terrence Howard) deepens the incision, the audience can hear the patient’s screams of agony, while the characters onscreen see only a man lying on an operating table, seemingly unconscious. Movies and television shows that portray doctors as ego-driven and error-prone are standard fare these days. But “Awake” takes dramatic license a step further, bringing to life a rare phenomenon that physicians are still struggling to understand. Called anesthesia awareness, it occurs when patients wake up during surgery because they are underanesthetized. In real life, these periods are generally brief. But the patient can indeed feel pain, ranging from minor to unendurable. “Those are the two ends of the scale, and there’s everything in between,” said Dr. Peter S. Sebel, a professor of anesthesiology at Emory University and a leading researcher on awareness. “We don’t have a good feel for how many episodes are distressing and how many are not.” Such nuances may be lost on viewers of “Awake,” which opened Nov. 30 — a date for which anesthesiologists spent months bracing themselves. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 11075 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Humans are evolving faster than ever before, which means people on different continents are becoming increasingly different, a new study says. Anthropology researchers at the University of Utah have found the pace of evolution has accelerated in the past 40,000 years, especially since the end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago. Human races are evolving away from each other and are very different from what they were 1,000 or 2,000 years ago, according to research leader Henry Harpending, a professor of anthropology at the university. That explains, in part, the difference between Viking invaders and their peaceful Swedish descendants. "The dogma has been these are cultural fluctuations, but almost any temperament trait you look at is under strong genetic influence," Harpending said in a release. The findings were published in Monday's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers looked for genetic evidence of natural selection, or the evolution of favourable gene mutations, over the past 80,000 years by analyzing DNA from 270 individuals in the International HapMap Project, which is an initiative to identify variations in genes that cause disease. They studied 3.9 million chromosome mutations from 270 people in four populations: Han Chinese, Japanese, Africa’s Yoruba tribe and northern Europeans, represented largely by data from Utah Mormons. Harpending and his team examined the speed at which chromosome mutations broke up and recombined and found that about seven per cent are undergoing rapid, recent evolution. © CBC 2007

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 11074 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Ewen Callaway Feel the rhythm: music is tightly tied to biology.PunchstockA study of 39 African cultures has shown that their genetics are closely linked to the songs they sing. Music, it seems, could reveal deeper biological connections between people than characteristics, such as language, that change rapidly when one culture meets another, says Floyd Reed, a population geneticist at the University of Maryland in College Park, who led the study. "Other aspects of these populations’ cultures have undergone tremendous change, but the music seems to persist," he says. "In a way music is very resilient to cultural change." The work, presented late November at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in Washington DC, compares modern genetic data to a catalogue of traditional songs gathered in the 1950s and 1960s by ethnographer Alan Lomax. Lomax, best known for his recordings of American folk music and his popularization of singers such as Woodie Guthrie and Lead Belly, collected some 5,500 songs from 857 cultures. To reveal connections between musical styles, Lomax, who died in 2002, and ethnomusicologist Victor Grauer created a system called cantometrics. This classifies vocal songs based on a sliding scale for 37 traits, such as yodelling and tempo. © 2007 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Hearing; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11073 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By John Bohannon The female fruit fly is a faithful lover, at least for a little while. As soon as she mates, she rejects all suitors for several days and spends her time laying eggs. Biologists have now found the switch that controls this coy female behavior, to the pleasure of male flies and disease researchers alike. The basis for the female fly's temporary monogamy is a mood-killing protein called sex peptide (SP). Male flies inject SP along with their semen to guard against potential competitors and to induce egg-laying, but the peptide's target has evaded researchers for decades. To track down SP's molecular dance partner, a team led by Barry Dickson, a biologist at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria, introduced 13,000 virgin female flies to 13,000 eager males. In each female fly, a different gene had been turned off using a technique known as RNA interference. After every mating, the researchers counted the number of eggs that the females produced in 48 hours. Then they matched each female with another randy male. "If we managed to turn off the receptor for SP in a female," says IMP graduate student Nilay Yapici, "then she should lay few or no eggs and be as receptive as a virgin when she meets another male." © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11072 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Philip Davis pleasures his brain with shifting Shakespearean syntax, measures the results on an electroencephalogram, and finds evidence that powerful writing can literally change the ways in which we think ... I have always been very interested in how literature affects us. But I don't really like it when people say, "This book changed my life!" Struggling with ourselves and our seemingly inextricable mixture of strengths and weaknesses, surely we know that change is much more difficult and much less instant than that. It does scant justice to the deep nature of a life to suppose that a book can simply "change" it. Literature is not a one-off remedy. And actually it is the reading of books itself, amongst other things, that has helped me appreciate that deep complex nature. Nonetheless, I do remain convinced that life without reading and the personal thinking it provokes would be a greatly diminished thing. So, with these varying considerations, I know I need to think harder about what literature does. And here's another thing. In the last few years I have become interested not only in the contents of the thoughts I read—their meaning for me, their mental and emotional effect—but also in the very shapes these thoughts take; a shape inseparable, I feel, from that content. Moreover, I had a specific intuition—about Shakespeare: that the very shapes of Shakespeare's lines and sentences somehow had a dramatic effect at deep levels in my mind.

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 11071 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By RICHARD E. NISBETT JAMES WATSON, the 1962 Nobel laureate, recently asserted that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” and its citizens because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.” Dr. Watson’s remarks created a huge stir because they implied that blacks were genetically inferior to whites, and the controversy resulted in his resignation as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. But was he right? Is there a genetic difference between blacks and whites that condemns blacks in perpetuity to be less intelligent? The first notable public airing of the scientific question came in a 1969 article in The Harvard Educational Review by Arthur Jensen, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Jensen maintained that a 15-point difference in I.Q. between blacks and whites was mostly due to a genetic difference between the races that could never be erased. But his argument gave a misleading account of the evidence. And others who later made the same argument — Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in “The Bell Curve,” in 1994, for example, and just recently, William Saletan in a series of articles on Slate — have made the same mistake. In fact, the evidence heavily favors the view that race differences in I.Q. are environmental in origin, not genetic. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Intelligence
Link ID: 11070 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists believe they have located a new brain area essential for good memory - the "irrelevance filter". People who are good at remembering things, even with distractions, have more activity in the basal ganglia on brain scans, the Swedish team found. The work in Nature Neuroscience could help explain why some people are better at remembering things than others. Clinically, it could also aid the understanding of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The ability to hold information in the mind so that it is immediately accessible is known as working memory. We use working memory all of the time - for example, when doing a simple maths calculation in our head or recalling a telephone number. Working memory is important because it gives a mental workspace in which we can hold information whilst mentally engaged in other relevant tasks, which is crucial for learning. Its capacity is limited and seems to vary from person to person. These variations are not just due to having a larger or smaller memory store, but also due to differences in how effectively irrelevant items are kept out of memory, the Karolinksa Institute researchers believe. Dr Torkel Klingberg and colleague Fiona McNab used a special brain scan called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to track what was happening in the brains of 25 healthy volunteers. The volunteers were asked to perform a computer-based task that required them to respond to target visual images, with or without distractions. A noise informed subjects when an upcoming visual display would contain irrelevant distracters along with the targets. (C)BBC

Keyword: ADHD; Attention
Link ID: 11069 - Posted: 12.10.2007

Some people may be genetically destined to have a generous personality, Israeli research has suggested. A total of 203 people took part in an online task in which they could either keep or give away money. Gene tests revealed those who had certain variants of a gene called AVPR1a were on average nearly 50% more likely to give money away. The study, by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, appears online in the journal Genes, Brain and Behavior. Lead researcher Dr Ariel Knafo said: "The experiment provided the first evidence, to my knowledge, for a relationship between DNA variability and real human altruism." The gene AVPR1a plays a key role in allowing a hormone called arginine vasopressin to act on brain cells. Vasopressin, in turn, has been implicated in social bonding. The researchers found greater altruism in players in which a key section of the gene, called its promoter, was longer. The promoter is the region that determines how active a gene is. In this case a longer promoter makes the gene more active. The researchers point out that a version of AVPR1a also exists in voles, where it also promotes social bonding. This, they say, suggests that altruism has a long rooted genetic history. Dr George Fieldman, a lecturer in psychology at Buckinghamshire New University, said carrying genes which promoted altruism and social bonding made evolutionary sense. (C)BBC

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 11068 - Posted: 12.10.2007

By BENEDICT CAREY BY age 2 it was clear that the boy had a sensibility all his own, affectionate and distant at the same time, often more focused on patterns and objects than the people around him. He was neither naturally social like his mother, nor an early and gifted reader like his father. Quirky, curious, exuberant, he would leap up and dance across the floor after solving a problem or winning a game, duck walking like an N.F.L. receiver posing for a highlight film. Yet after Phil and Susan Schwarz received a diagnosis for their son, Jeremy, of high functioning autism, they began to think carefully about their own behaviors and histories. Mr. Schwarz, a software developer in Framingham, Mass., found in his son’s diagnosis a new language to understand his own life. His sensitivities when growing up to loud noises and bright light, his own diffidence through school, his parents’ and grandparents’ special intellectual skills — all echoed through his and Jeremy’s behavior, like some ancient rhythm. His son’s diagnosis, Mr. Schwarz said, “provided a frame in which a whole bunch of seemingly unrelated aspects of my own life growing up fit together for the first time.” Researchers have long known that many psychiatric disorders and developmental problems run in families. Children born to parents with bipolar disorder, in which moods cycle between euphoria and depression, run about eight times the normal risk for developing a mood problem. Those born to parents with depression run three times the usual risk. Attention and developmental disorders like autism also have a genetic component. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11067 - Posted: 06.24.2010

From The Economist print edition IN A world where sight and sound seem to reign supreme, all it takes is a cursory glance at the size of the perfume industry to realise that smell matters quite a lot, too. Odours are known to regulate moods, thoughts and even dating decisions, which is why any serious romantic will throw on the eau de toilette before going out for a night on the town. Yet in all these cases, those affected are aware of what they are smelling. Unlike the media of sight and sound, in which subliminal messages have been studied carefully, the potential power of subliminal smells has been neglected. Wen Li and her colleagues at Northwestern University in Chicago are now changing that. In particular, they are investigating smells so faint that people say they cannot detect them. The idea is to see whether such smells can nevertheless change the way that people behave towards others. Dr Li's experiment, the results of which have just been published in Psychological Science, employed 31 volunteers. These people were exposed to three different odours at low concentration. One was the fresh lemon scent of citral. The second was the neutral ethereal perfume of anisole. The third was the foul sweaty smell of valeric acid. And the concentrations really were low. In the case of valeric acid, for example, that concentration was seven parts per trillion—a level only just detectable by bloodhounds. As a control, Dr Li used a mineral oil that has no detectable smell at any concentration. © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2007.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Emotions
Link ID: 11066 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Species: Rattus Norvegicus; common brown rat Habitat: University science lab Dear Readers: Never before have I sent you my notes from anywhere but the great outdoors. But I wanted to share my visit with Dr. Jaak Panksepp, in his university science laboratory. Pre-trip, I googled this visionary professor, who is developing an exciting new area of study called "affective neuroscience". He believes, "People don't have a monopoly on emotion; despair and love are responses that have helped all sorts of creatures survive and thrive." For decades, he pioneered bravely while other scientists denied, ignored or even laughed at his ideas. For me, Dr. Panksepp is a true hero. Using his "rat tickling study" results he hopes further research on the emotional behaviours of animals may help children with neurological disorders, such as autism. What follows is Dr. Panksepp sharing his "ticklish" information by explaining, in his own words, the steps of one key experiment. Do Rats Have Fun? We wanted to know if young rats, exhibit sounds like laughter when they are playing, and whether we can get them to make those sounds if we tickle and play with them. © Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2007

Keyword: Emotions; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 11065 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It is possible to die from a broken heart, mounting evidence shows. A review of recent work, published in The Lancet, found that the risk of death increases by up to a fifth following bereavement. Investigator Margaret Stroebe of Utrecht University, The Netherlands, said the psychological distress caused by the loss played a big part. Heart experts say people who lose a partner often adopted unhealthy habits such as smoking and poor diet. Indeed, for widowers, the increased death risk will probably be linked with alcohol consumption and the loss of their sole confidante, who would have overseen her husband's health status, the researchers told The Lancet. In widows, the picture is not as clear, but intense loneliness and the psychological distress caused by the loss could play a large part. Experts know psychological stress can cause physical changes in the body - stress hormones can disrupt body processes. One study found men were 21% more likely to die after the loss of their wife. Widows had a 17% increased risk of death. The risk appears to be highest in the early weeks following bereavement and decreased with time. Men who lose a wife are also three times more likely to take their own life. Widows, however, do not have an increased suicide risk. And Danish study from 2003 showed fathers and mothers have a raised suicide risk after the death of a child, a risk which is higher the younger the child and is particularly high in the first 30 days post-bereavement. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stress; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 11064 - Posted: 12.08.2007

Depression may increase the risk of the bone disorder osteoporosis in premenopausal women, a study suggests. A US study found 17% of depressed women but just 2% of those not depressed, had thinner bone in a part of the hip. It found depressed women had overactive immune systems, making too many chemicals that promote inflammation including one that promotes bone loss. The Archives of Internal Medicine study compared 89 depressed women with 44 non-depressed women, all aged 21 to 45. Osteoporosis affects half of all women, and one in five men, over the age of 50. It is estimated to cause 60,000 broken hips each year in the UK, costing the NHS £1.73bn. After bone mass reaches its peak in youth, bone-thinning continues throughout life, accelerating after menopause. Hip bones are among the most vulnerable to fracture in osteoporosis patients. The researchers, from the National Institute of Mental Health, found these bones were particularly susceptible to thinning in depressed premenopausal women. Dr Richard Nakamura, NIMH deputy director, said: "Osteoporosis is a silent disease. Too often, the first symptom a clinician sees is when a patient shows up with a broken bone. "Now we know that depression can serve as a red flag - that depressed women are more likely than other women to approach menopause already at higher risk of fractures." Other risk factors for osteoporosis - such as calcium and alcohol intake and contraceptive use - were similar in the two groups. The depressed women were taking anti-depressant medications, which have previously been linked to an increased risk of fracture. However, the current study found no link between these drugs and bone-thinning. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 11063 - Posted: 12.08.2007