The Canadian Press Female students who leave home to attend first-year university or college are significantly more likely to start binge eating than peers who stay home to attend school — a behaviour that puts them at risk for more serious eating disorders in the future, new research suggests. A study of University of Alberta students found that females in their inaugural year were three times more likely to binge eat if they had left their parents' home to obtain post-secondary education. Repeated bouts of eating large amounts of food at a single sitting can also pack on the pounds over time, setting the stage for obesity, diabetes and other health problems, says the study. (CBC) As well, female students who reported higher levels of dissatisfaction with their bodies had a three-fold greater risk of binge eating episodes, say the researchers, whose study is published in the October issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Lead researcher Erin Barker, who earned her PhD in developmental psychology at the Edmonton-based university, said young women who scored low on social adjustment also were more apt to binge eat. © The Canadian Press, 2007

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 10822 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALEX BERENSON Eli Lilly yesterday added strong warnings to the label of Zyprexa, its best-selling medicine for schizophrenia, citing the drug’s tendency to cause weight gain, high blood sugar, high cholesterol and other metabolic problems. For the first time, Zyprexa’s label now acknowledges that the drug causes high blood sugar more than some other medicines for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, called atypical antipsychotics. Lilly previously argued that Zyprexa had not been proved to cause high blood sugar at a more frequent rate than its competitors. Concern about Zyprexa’s side effects has been increasing since at least 2004, and Zyprexa’s prescriptions and market share have fallen sharply over the period. As a result, the new warnings may have only a moderate impact among doctors and patients, said S. Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Bipolar Disorder Research Program at Emory University. “The knowledge has been out there, and it’s already impacted prescribing patterns a great deal,” Dr. Ghaemi said. The new label will also indicate that patients who take Zyprexa may keep gaining weight for as long as two years after starting therapy. That contradicts earlier public statements by Lilly that weight gain on Zyprexa tends to plateau after a few months of use. One in six patients who take Zyprexa will gain more than 33 pounds after two years of use, the label says. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 10821 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DALLAS - Fertility rates in birds can get a lift if the male anticipates that a sexual encounter is just around the corner, researchers from the University of Texas reported on Thursday. The unorthodox study involved 28 male quails, 14 female quails, and two chambers: a green one near a noisy room and a white one on an isolated table. The males were put into each of the chambers for a brief period daily over a period of five days. Half were given access to a female immediately after their time in the green chamber but not the white: for the other half it was the opposite. The male quails therefore came to associate one chamber with the act of copulation. "We can take anything and make it a romantic setting if there is the anticipation of sex," said Michael Domjan, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin. "We concluded the experiment by pairing the males with single females. One male would go into the romantic chamber and then have access to the female, then one would go into the non-romantic chamber and then have access to the same female," Domjan, one of the authors of the study, told Reuters by telephone. © 2007 MSNBC.com © 2007 Microsoft

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 10820 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Constance Holden In a particularly stimulating study, researchers have found that lap dancers--women who work in strip joints and, for cash, gyrate in the laps of seated men--earn more when they are in the fertile phase of their menstrual cycle. The finding suggests that women subtly signal when they are most fertile, although just how they do it is not clear. Women, unlike many mammals, don't come into heat or estrus, a state of obvious fertility that attracts potential mates. Common wisdom has it that estrus was lost as humans evolved. The notion is that women evolved "concealed ovulation" along with around-the-month sexual receptivity the better to manipulate males by keeping them in the dark, says Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. But now Miller and colleagues have found evidence that a woman’s state of fertility may not be so secret after all. The researchers used ads and flyers to sign up 18 lap dancers from local clubs. Each woman was asked to log on to a Web site and report her work hours, tips, and when she was menstruating. Lap dancers generally work 5-hour shifts with 18 or so 3-minute performances per shift. They average about $14 per "dance"--all of which is called a "tip" because it is illegal to pay for sex in New Mexico. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 10819 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower Two gene variations appear frequently in depressed patients who contemplate killing themselves during treatment with a common antidepressant medication, a new study finds. In the study, reports of suicidal thoughts occurred from 2 to 15 times as often in antidepressant-treated patients with the key gene variations as in patients without them, say psychiatrist Gonzalo Laje of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., and his colleagues. Participants received citalopram, a widely prescribed antidepressant related to medications such as fluoxetine (Prozac). "These findings need to be replicated before we can devise a genetic test to determine who's at risk for suicidal thoughts during antidepressant treatment," Laje says. The study identifies two crucial genes that contribute to the formation of cell receptors for glutamate, a chemical messenger in the brain that has been implicated in antidepressant effects. Variants of these genes apparently promote suicidal thinking only in depressed people taking antidepressants, the researchers conclude in the October American Journal of Psychiatry. ©2007 Science Service.

Keyword: Depression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 10818 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Elizabeth Quill Carbon dioxide may deserve blame for more than just the panic over global warming. New research involving healthy people inhaling the gas indicates that the brain's reaction to carbon dioxide helps explain panic attacks and other anxious feelings, independent of rising world temperatures. This new insight, reported 3 October in PLoS One, could help physicians prevent the development of depression and other anxiety disorders. It's long been known that anxiety-prone individuals often experience panic attacks when they breathe in carbon dioxide. Psychiatrists have theorized that emotional distress reflects a built-in response to suffocation. The "false suffocation alarm theory" suggests that the brain has a carbon dioxide sensor and that it is oversensitive in some people, mistakenly spurring panic attacks. Such a sensor could have evolved to alert oxygen-breathing organisms of impending death. Eric Griez, an experimental psychiatrist at the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands, came up with a test for the false-alarm theory. If it is valid, he surmised, healthy individuals should show some sensitivity to carbon dioxide as well. So he and his colleagues recently asked 64 volunteers to inhale two deep breaths of four mixtures of compressed air containing 9%, 17.5%, 35%, or no carbon dioxide. After inhaling each mixture, the volunteers continuously rated their level of fear and discomfort on a scale from 1 to 100 using a touch screen and rated their panic using a questionnaire that listed 13 common symptoms of panic attacks. As the dose of carbon dioxide increased, so did fear and discomfort. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 10817 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists are hopeful that they have found a way to halt the progression of motor neurone disease (MND). A team at Bath University discovered a causal link between the gene involved in the formation of blood vessels and the development of some forms of MND. Mutant versions of the gene's product - angiogenin - are toxic to motor neurones, so blocking this process may stop the disease, they say. The latest UK work is published in the journal Human Molecular Genetics. There are about 5,000 people suffering with MND at any one time in the UK. The condition affects men more than women and one or two people in every 100,000 will be newly diagnosed with MND each year. In MND, over time, the cells responsible for transmitting the chemical messages that enable muscle movements become injured and subsequently die. Ultimately, the disease fatally interferes with those muscles involved in breathing. Last year, scientists discovered that some patients with MND have a mutated version of the human angiogenin gene. Since then, experts have been trying to find out what role angiogenin plays in the maintenance and development of motor neurones. Lead researcher Dr Vasanta Subramanian said: "We have found that mutated versions of this molecule are toxic to motor neurones and affect their ability to put out extensions called the axons. (C)BBC

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 10816 - Posted: 10.05.2007

By Charles Q. Choi A three-way sex struggle resembling the game rock-paper-scissors may have existed for 175 million years or more in lizards, research now suggests. The reptilian triads may be far more common than previously recognized — and may even shape the way humans behave, the scientists said "You either cooperate, or take by force, or take by deception," said researcher Barry Sinervo, a behavioral geneticist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "It's one of those basic games that structures life." The scientists investigated European common lizards (Lacerta vivipara), devoting five years to studying the lizards at five sites in the Pyrenees mountain range on the border of France and Spain. They captured more than 250 lizards per year and followed their successes and failures. Sinervo and his colleagues found males adopt one of those three strategies when pursuing females. A quick look at their gaudy-colored bellies reveals which line of attack they will pursue. Orange-bellied males are brutes that invade other lizards' territories to mate with any female they can hold. But while they're gone, yellow-bellied males sneak deceptively onto the vacant territory and mate with undefended females. White-bellied males guard their mates closely and ally with other white-bellied lizards to keep the yellows at bay. Thus the analogy to rock-paper-scissors — orange force defeats white cooperation, cooperation defeats yellow deception and deception defeats force. © 2007 MSNBC.com © 2007 Microsoft

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 10815 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Juan Uriagereka • Language is an innate faculty, rather than a learned behavior. This idea was the primary insight of the Chomskyan revolution that helped found the field of modern linguistics in the late 1950s, and its implications are both simple and profound. If innate, language must be genetic. It is hardwired within us from conception and evolved from structures and genes with analogues existing throughout the animal kingdom. In a sense, language is universal. Yet we humans are the only species with the ability for what may rightly be called language and, moreover, we have specific linguistic behaviors that seem to have appeared only within the past 200,000 years—an eye-blink of evolution. Why are humans the only species to have suddenly hit upon the remarkable possibilities of language? If speech is a product of our DNA, then surely other species also have some of the same genes required for language because of our basic, shared biochemistry. One of our closest relatives should have developed something that is akin to language, or another species should have happened upon its attendant advantages through parallel evolution. A quasi-paradox has persisted within the field of linguistics, because the sudden emergence of such a complex, limitless system in a single species is hard to rationalize in terms of standard evolution. Its rapid spread makes language seem more like a viral epidemic that swept through the human population rather than a trait inherited through the typical dynamics of evolution. © Copyright 2005-2007 Seed Media Group, LLC.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 10814 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Nora Schultz Tiny cameras attached to New Caledonian crows' tail feathers are offering new insights into the birds' behaviour in the wild. The crows, famous for their impressive tool-making and using abilities, are also notoriously difficult to observe in their native environment because they live in forests and are very shy. Working together with Jonathan Watts, who has previously constructed cameras worn by eagles for the BBC television series Animal Camera, Christian Rutz and colleagues from the University of Oxford developed cameras weighing only 14 grammes that can be worn by the crows without disturbing their natural behaviour. "We attach the camera to the tail feathers so the lens pokes out under the belly," says Rutz. "This allows us to see the crow's head whenever it bends forward." The camera also contains a simple radio transmitter that reveals the crows' location. This lets the researchers track them at a distance of few hundred metres, so that they can catch the camera's video signal with a portable receiving dish. Up to 70 minutes of footage can be broadcast by the camera's chip, and the camera is shed once the bird moults its tail feathers. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 10812 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Kerri Smith An anaesthetic method that kills pain without producing numbness or preventing movement has been developed. Current local anaesthetics work by indiscriminately blocking all the channels in a nerve cell, so they can block movement and sensation as well as pain. However, the new technique involves using a combination of two compounds to home in on pain-sensing nerves in a specific area, leaving other functions unaffected. It could prove useful for situations where patients require anaesthetic, but also need to be able to move or control muscles, such as in childbirth and in some dental procedures. Bruce Bean of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and his colleagues targeted the pain by taking advantage of an ion channel called TRPV1, which is only present in pain-sensing nerve cells. This channel opens when it senses capsaicin, the active ingredient in chilli peppers. Working on cultures of neurons, the researchers used capsaicin to open the ion channel, allowing their painkiller of choice — a local anaesthetic called QX-314 — to enter the cell. QX-314 is similar to the commonly-used local anaesthetic lidocaine, but, unlike lidocaine, it has no effect unless it is acting from within a cell. The team found that capsaicin did indeed allow the anaesthetic to only enter pain-sensing neurons, where it could then dampen the action of these cells. © 2007 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 10811 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sally Squires Pregnant and breast-feeding women should eat at least 12 ounces of fish and seafood per week to ensure their babies' optimal brain development, a coalition of top scientists from private groups and federal agencies plans to declare today in a public advisory that marks a major break with current U.S. health advice. The scientists' conclusion is at odds with the standard government advice issued in 2001 that new mothers and mothers-to-be should eat no more than 12 ounces of seafood per week because of concerns about mercury contamination. Shifting data and advice on how women's consumption of fish and seafood affects brain development of fetuses and infants, the most vulnerable groups, have produced one of the more vexing nutritional dilemmas of recent years. In the short term, at least, today's statement, drafted by scientists affiliated with multiple medical organizations, is likely to deepen the dilemma for many women, especially since the Food and Drug Administration indicated that it will study the new information but is not prepared to change the advice it reiterated in 2004. © Copyright 1996-2007 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 10810 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Ewen Callaway Geneticists used just 21 dogs to find the genes that code for the Rhodesian ridgeback's contrary hair.A. BACCHELLA/NATUREPL.COMMan's best friend is becoming the geneticist's too. Researchers have made good on the dog genome's promise: a quick-and-dirty way to find the genes responsible for physical traits using just a couple of dozen pooches and a gene chip. Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, of the Broad Institute of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her colleagues have devised a method of locating the genes responsible for specific traits that requires as few as 10 animals with the feature and 10 without — as long as they are all the same breed1. The team has also identified the genes that give the Rhodesian ridgeback breed its ridge but additionally predispose the dogs to a crippling developmental disease called dermoid sinus2. Such feats were predicted when Lindblad-Toh's team mapped the dog genome3 but this is the first time they have been achieved. The technique exploits the unique evolutionary history of dogs, which humans tamed from grey wolves between 15,000 and 100,000 years ago. Over centuries, humans have bred dogs, selecting for traits such as size and ability to herd sheep. Most of the 400 breeds descend from just a handful of hounds. The result: vast stretches of genetic similarity in dogs of the same breed, allowing geneticists to spot the few differences relatively easily. “Here you have the perfect genetic model,” says Leif Andersson, a biologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, in Uppsala, Sweden, who co-leads the project. © 2007 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 10809 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Steve Mitchell Neuroscientists have taken a step closer to a physiological explanation of why some people work and play well with others. Two areas in the brain appear to have key roles in how people conform with social norms. These parts of the brain mature slowly, which may help explain why adolescents are less easily cowed by the threat of punishment than are adults. All societies have social norms or widely shared beliefs about how people should behave in a given situation. But little is known about how the brain processes the possibility of punishment for violating these norms. To gain insight into this phenomena, a team led by Manfred Spitzer of the University of Ulm in Germany used a technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine which areas in the brain were most active in 23 men making decisions that could result in social punishment. The men were given money and asked to decide how much of it to share with someone else. The men knew that the other person could punish them by reducing some or all of their money if they decided the initial shared amount was unfair. Several areas of the men's brains were active, but the regions that seemed to be the most involved in how the men made their decisions included the lateral orbitofrontal cortex and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the researchers report in the 4 October issue of Neuron. These areas, which reside near the front of the brain, have previously been associated with social moral judgments. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Emotions; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 10808 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A combination of two drugs can selectively block pain-sensing neurons in rats without impairing movement or other sensations such as touch, according to a new study by National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported investigators. The finding suggests an improved way to treat pain from childbirth and surgical procedures. It may also lead to new treatments to help the millions of Americans who suffer from chronic pain. The study used a combination of capsaicin — the substance that makes chili peppers hot — and a drug called QX-314. This combination exploits a characteristic unique to pain-sensing neurons, also called nociceptors, in order to block their activity without impairing signals from other cells. In contrast, most pain relievers used for surgical procedures block activity in all types of neurons. This can cause numbness, paralysis and other nervous system disturbances. "The Holy Grail in pain science is to eliminate pathologic pain without impairing thinking, alertness, coordination, or other vital functions of the nervous system. This finding shows that a specific combination of two molecules can block only pain-related neurons. It holds the promise of major future breakthroughs for the millions of persons who suffer with disabling pain," says Story C. Landis, Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at the NIH, which funds the investigators' research along with the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). The study appears in the October 4, 2007, issue of Nature.[1]

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 10807 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By David Biello The doughnut-shaped machine swallows the nun, who is outfitted in a plain T-shirt and loose hospital pants rather than her usual brown habit and long veil. She wears earplugs and rests her head on foam cushions to dampen the device’s roar, as loud as a jet engine. Supercooled giant magnets generate intense fields around the nun’s head in a high-tech attempt to read her mind as she communes with her deity. The Carmelite nun and 14 of her Catholic sisters have left their cloistered lives temporarily for this claustrophobic blue tube that bears little resemblance to the wooden prayer stall or sparse room where such mystical experiences usually occur. Each of these nuns answered a call for volunteers “who have had an experience of intense union with God” and agreed to participate in an experiment devised by neuroscientist Mario Beauregard of the University of Montreal. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Beauregard seeks to pinpoint the brain areas that are active while the nuns recall the most powerful religious epiphany of their lives, a time they experienced a profound connection with the divine. The question: Is there a God spot in the brain? The spiritual quest may be as old as humankind itself, but now there is a new place to look: inside our heads. Using fMRI and other tools of modern neuroscience, researchers are attempting to pin down what happens in the brain when people experience mystical awakenings during prayer and meditation or during spontaneous utterances inspired by religious fervor. © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc

Keyword: Emotions; Brain imaging
Link ID: 10806 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LINDSEY TANNER CHICAGO - Investing in depressed employees - quickly getting them treatment and even offering telephone psychotherapy - can cut absenteeism while improving workers' health, a study suggests. Many employers view mental health coverage as a financial black hole, but the study shows that spending money on depression is a smart business move, said researcher Dr. Philip Wang. Wang works for the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the study. Employees who got the aggressive intervention worked on average about two weeks more during the yearlong study than those who got the usual care - advice to see their doctor or seek a mental health specialist. Also, more workers in the intervention group were still employed by year's end - 93 percent vs. 88 percent - savings that helped employers avoid hiring and training costs, the researchers said. In addition, intervention employees were almost 40 percent more likely to recover from depression during the yearlong study, which is reported in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association. © 2002-2007 redOrbit.com.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 10805 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists may have discovered a tangible benefit to leading a conscientious life - a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease. The Rush University Medical Center in Chicago examined nearly 1,000 Catholic nuns, priests and brothers. Those who rated themselves highly conscientious had an 89% lower risk of Alzheimer's than those who thought they were the least self-disciplined. The study appears in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry. Critics warned against drawing conclusions for the general population, but the researchers said the group they studied, although all devoutly religious, contained a broad spectrum of personality types. None of the participants had dementia when the study started in 1994, but 176 went on to develop the disease. The researchers asked the volunteers to rank themselves on a five-point scale to determine just how conscientious they were. They also carried out medical and neurological tests each year until 2006. The average score on the conscientious test was 34. Those who scored 40 or higher were found to be much less likely to develop Alzheimer's, and had a slower general rate of mental decline than those who scored 28 or lower. When the researchers took into account a combination of risk factors, including smoking, inactivity and limited social connections, they still found that the dutiful people had a 54% lower risk of Alzheimer's compared to people with the lowest scores for conscientiousness. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 10804 - Posted: 10.02.2007

By ALAN SCHWARZ WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — Hannah Stohler sat beside the piano she could no longer play, in the living room that spun like a carousel, in the chair in which she tried to read but could not remember a word. Ten months after her third concussion while playing high school soccer knocked her into a winter-long haze of headaches and dizziness and depression that few around her could comprehend, Stohler recalled how she once viewed concussions. “I thought they were a football injury — a boy thing,” said Stohler, a junior at Conard High School in West Hartford, Conn. “Those guys are taught to hit hard and knock people to the ground. But anyone can get a concussion, and I don’t think a lot of girls recognize that. They have no idea how awful the effects can be — it changes your life.” Stohler, 16, has more company than most people know. While football does have the most concussions (and controversy over their treatment) in high school athletics, girls competing in sports like soccer and basketball are more susceptible to concussions than boys are in the same sports, studies show. According to a study to be published in the Journal of Athletic Training, in high school soccer, girls sustained concussions 68 percent more often than boys did. Female concussion rates in high school basketball were almost three times higher than among boys. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 10803 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Clare Porter & Daniel Weissman Memories provide us a personal history and a sense of identity. There are times, however, when we'd like to forget a social blunder or other embarrassing incident -- or in some cases, a memory so traumatic that it is painful to recall. Soldiers who have experienced horrific events may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), emotional distress stemming from an inability to stop recalling traumatic events. Our comfort, and sometimes our mental health, can depend on suppressing such memories. How do our brains manage this task? An emotional memory has many components. For example, the memory of a car accident might be associated with the sound of tires squealing, the sight of two cars colliding, the smell of gasoline, and feelings of fear and panic that build as the accident unfolds. One might imagine that suppressing such a memory would require suppressing each of the individual components. Brendan Depue, Tim Curran and Marie Banich, all of the University of Colorado, explored this hypothesis in their study entitled "Prefrontal Regions Orchestrate Suppression of Emotional Memories via a Two-Phase Process." Human participants were trained to associate each of several female faces with a distinct photograph of an emotionally distressing event (such as a car crash). Later, they were shown each of the faces in turn and asked either to think or to not think about the associated photograph. While participants were performing this task, the authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure their brain activity. (Functional MRI reveals where blood flows in the brain when a stimulus is presented, thereby indirectly indicating which regions become active). After the fMRI scan was completed, participants were given a memory test in which they were shown each face and asked to describe the photograph it had been paired with. © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 10802 - Posted: 06.24.2010